Dreamcatcher

by Beverley Jones

When Ellis Andrews wakes to a knock on the door in the middle of the night he's devastated to learn that his wife Rae has been killed in a car accident in the New England town of Chareham.

Was Rae's death simply a case of 'wrong place, wrong time' as the local police would have him believe or something more sinister? When Ellis uncovers Rae's diary and reads the disturbing accounts of the 'night terrors' she's been suffering since childhood, he's unwilling to accept that there could be a link between them and her final car accident, until he begins to dream of Rae each night.... and starts to doubt his own sanity ...

Dreamcatcher is a multi stranded mystery about a grieving man searching for answers. But it also explores the power of grief and guilt, and the ability of love to shape lives or break them apart.

388 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 2014

About the author

I'm a former journalist who worked for The Western Mail newspaper and BBC Wales Today in Cardiff before becoming a press officer for the police.

My latest novel The Beach House is out in ebook and paperback now.. My previous novel, Wilderness has been adapted for TV by Firebird and Amazon Prime, starring Jenna Coleman and Oliver Jackson-Cohen. My previous books, Halfway and Where She Went are published by LittleBrown (Hachette) under the name BE Jones. Take a look at my second profile on here under BE Jones.

Reviews

[Jürgen Olschewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this novel very much. It keeps you guessing right to the end. I loved how Beverley Jones ended this book, with such a gathering of pace and ratcheting up of tension, very skilfully bringing all the strands of the story together for the final showdown. It left some of its best surprises until its denouement, as all good thrillers should, I feel. The characters are wholly believable, they have jobs, families, distinguishable voices, and complex and contradictory emotions. They are multi-faceted, and even the minor characters are drawn with much skill. You find yourself simultaneously disliking a character’s selfish traits, yet also feeling for their plight. The settings are equally well-drawn, and refreshingly novel, at least for me.
This is a brilliantly-constructed thriller, and one which pulled me right into the world and concerns of its two main protagonists, Rae and Ellis. There is certainly an eerie quality to the story and some parts of it are genuinely creepy, yet this element is handled such that the uncanniness of Rae’s, and later Ellis’s, dreamscapes is rendered uncomfortably real.
It deals with the subject of grief and grieving most convincingly. Superbly plotted and written with a lot of heart and a clear love of, and facility for, language. Dreamcatcher deserves a wide readership, and I also think it would make a terrific film.

[Babus Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two tragic, seemingly accidents kill sisters Ruth Russell and Rae Andrews leaving Ellis Andrews, Rae's husband with a huge number of questions and nightmares. However, Ellis isn't the only one left with questions and nightmares over the loss of his wife and sister-in-law on the same road in Boston a year to the day apart.

This isn't the first thriller I have read by Beverley Jones and Dreamcatcher promised much in the blurb and started with a lot of potential. Jones captures Ellis' grief, anguish and confusion very well and spins a good supernatural angle through the nightmares experienced by Rae and Ellis, which adds another dimension to this thriller. I did find, however, that the book lost pace around the 60% mark, which didn't quite come back until I was reading the final part of the story. Like all good thrillers you do suspect everyone at some point of the story but I did correctly predict the conclusion before I got to the end.

I did enjoy reading Dreamcatcher and although it did reach a very satisfying conclusion I felt the story lost a bit of focus at 60% of the way through, but overall was a good thriller.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because I very recently read 'Holiday Money' by this author and enjoyed it a great deal. Dreamcatcher is a little different as it splits the setting between South Wales and New England. In doing so Jones has created a fascinating mystery about a man desperately searching for answers following his wife's sudden death. Beautifully written and, again, a cut above your average 'thriller' it once more kept me guessing to the end.

I really liked the atmosphere of the little New England town with its many secrets and the narratives of the different characters, the policewoman Sally Riley, the old fisherman Hancock, and the small town politics behind the scenes. Sometimes the writing is sharp and pacy, sometimes dreamlike and unnerving as the different aspects of the story are revealed and Ellis's search takes him into some unexpected territory -overall a fascinating take on loss, love, belief and guilt.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

This multi-stranded, unsettling story definitely kept me hooked, right from the first scene and what we all dread - a knock on the door in the middle of the night and policeman bearing grave news - to the final resolution.

The novel captures Ellis’s journey, literally and figuratively, towards discovering how his wife Rae, the apparent victim of a road accident, met her death. Of course all is not as it seems as we learn in flashbacks of the couple’s relationship and the significance of the ‘too good to be true’ New England town that plays a crucial part in the events.

The tale is pieced together through five different perspectives but the reader is teased with recurring motifs and elements, playing with themes of personal choice versus fate without ever descending into pretentiousness or cliché.

Part murder investigation, part study of love and grief - this was a superior and atmospheric mystery that kept me up at night.

[Dr Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jones has done it again! A cracking story that really manages to make you think. This time she's branched out from her previous South Wales setting to create a story set in two locations - Cardiff and Cape Cod in New England - and divided the action between several characters that makes the story all the more enthralling. It still has her trademark dark and broken characters with their refreshingly honest flaws and perspectives. An upmarket and intelligent holiday read - I could see this as a beautifully shot movie.