Dream by the Shadows

Stars:2Start Date:09/2/25Ending Date:9/21/25Genre: Gothic Fantasy Ya RetelingForm: AudiobookPage Count: 352Publishing Date: 9/12/23Point of View: 1st, 3rd Setting: Notcis, Dream World Content Warning: Mild ViolenceMy Blog:https://tanyasreading.wordpress.com/2025/10/05/dream-by-the-shadows-by-logan-karlie/Thank you Netgalley and Hachette Audio for the ALC in exchange for an honest review.Dream by the Shadows is a Beauty and the Beast and Labyrinth retelling mixed together. This is the second BATB Meets Labyrinth read this month and while it's not as disappointing as the first one which ended as a did not finish but it is still disappointing. In my opinion , it didn't give the vibes that it is marketed to give.The first thought I had after I finished was:" What the hell did I just read?"This was a confusing read from the beginning, middle, and somewhat end.I literally cannot tell you what this book was about because I am genuinely confused.This book made me feel like I was a passenger in a car and I kept asking the driver " Where are we going?" It had no sense of direction and just felt like we were going in circles. Towards the end, it finally felt like we were going somewhere but it still fell flat.The whole concept of dreams corrupting people so the people take an elixir so they don't dream was interesting but it was still confusing.  Essmer, our FMC was frustrating as hell to be in her head which towards the end , she started to feel like Ferye 2.0 because somehow she can perfectly sword fight after getting a sword and conjure up shadows like the MMC.  She lacked discernment which was frustrating in the majority of the book until she began to trust the MMC.. I understand that she wanted to save her brother from the kingdom of Notics and clear her family name but going on and on through the majority of the book thinking the MMC was doing the corruption when he didn't got frustrating as hell. .The Shadowbringer aka MMC who can conjure up shadows and was trapped in the dream world for 500 years, is not evil and actually got some good backstory which was probably the only part of the book that I felt like we were finally getting somewhere.The majority of this is world building and lore with some info dumps and characters pop out of nowhere towards the end after being mentioned once in the beginning of the book. I can not tell who is actually the villain who is controlling the demons and actually having their hands in the corruption of people. It is not a clear straight answer because of how confusing the book is.The romance was honestly non-existent for most of the book and felt rushed and underdeveloped. This supposed to be a romance fantasy enemies to lovers slow burn but the MMC didn't pop up until 20% into the book.. I was at 60% in the book and she still thought he got something to do with the corruption even though everything points to him not having nothing to do with it.. I mean she literally was about to have a sword fight with him before they got dropped into his memories. During going through his memoirs which is like 65% in, that's when they started to work together and become cordial to each other. Around the 78% percent mark, they had their first kiss with barely no spark between them. About the time the book was over, they were declaring their love for each other, acting like they were King and Queen of the shadows like they were Ferye and Rhyand 2.0..They stayed longer in the enemies stage, barely got to the cordial and friends stage ( which to me is the most important part of Enemies to lovers), and somehow got to the lovers stage. Like how can you create/build a romance with two characters when they have barely interacted or have scenes together?? If you want me to care about these characters being in love with you, have to create that tension for me to care. Yall it was a ballroom/masquerade scene in this and it fell flat at hell. Ballroom scenes are where to create romance tension between your FMC and MMC. Especially if you are taking inspiration from two stories that have ballroom scenes in them. I can't tell you how many BATB retellings that I read that paid homage to the Ballroom scene because of how romantic and iconic it is.Honestly I can care less about them, the romance. and the plot. I am honestly shocked that I finished it because there were a lot of times that I was going to DNFed it.One more point before I end this.I didn't understand why the narration of the audiobook was dual when the book with the expectation of one chapter towards the end was all in the FMC point of view. Dual narration is cool but it was kind of pointless when the majority of the book is only in the FMC point of view and not MMCs.. So the female narrator is still pretty much doing all the heavy lifting while the male narrator just reads the male parts. Dual Narration would work better if the book was in both FMC and MMC point of view. That way when it's MMC pov the female narrator does all the female parts and vice versa.The book just wasn't giving what I expected to give.