The Shape of Dreams

by April Reynolds

In this second novel by the award-winning novelist, a trio of women in East Harlem come together in friendship and tragedy to organize against the systems that hold them down

We're in East Harlem, in the mid-eighties, and the large and formidable (some say crazy woman) Twin Johnson discovers the body of Anita's boy, Tyrone, on the sidewalk. She does just what her uncle, who runs his basement crack den as a family business, warned her never to she calls the police, setting in motion a cycle of events that expand the consciousness of this struggling community. Anita, a postal worker, army widow, and church lady, is determined to solve her son's murder, but her quest for justice rattles the neighborhood, which itself is like a complex character in this teeming novel, with its Mets fans and gossips, immigrant shop owners and sneaker-obsessed teens on its garbage-piled streets. The local dreamers include a charismatic man of the cloth, a teenage girl with a Whitney Houston voice and no prospects at all, and Anita's opinionated new bestie, Wanda, whose own truant son the police harass and arrest on a regular basis, and who brings both blessings and curses into Anita's exploded world. 

Anita, Wanda, and Twin, the power triad of this vibrant novel, are all drawn into the basement den as the reader sinks into their rich backstories. Will they be able to break its spell? Will the Reverend's pressure on the authorities to find Tyrone's killer yield answers?  In the end, in the NY Mets' banner summer of 1986, this community will come together to mourn, find justice, and shape their dreams as best they can.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Adult, Historical

304 pages, Hardcover

Published February 3, 2026

Reviews

[Dona's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

It wasn't perfect, but it was excellent. Harrowing in places, but a revelation.

Pre-Read Notes:

I was attracted to the title here, and I'm glad I grabbed it because it's gripping and terribly sad that I feel deep down.

"Carl felt as if she had cursed him out. “So you want me to be a nobody.” He sat up in her bed and reached for his shirt.... “Being good and decent ain’t being a nobody.”" p237

"Thump, thump, it was the rhythm of our country. Thump, thump ; it’s the door locking. You flinch or you don’t hear it at all, and still that’s the dance; that’s the music. Thump, thump. The sound of opportunity closing for no good reason. Thump , thump. That’s the sound of your luck running out, your dreams crumbling. Thump, thump. That’s what you snap your fingers to, cause dreaming the symphony of a better life ain’t nothing but trouble. Thump, thump; start small and stay that way. And for all y’all who think I’m about to jump into some riff, forget it. There is no riff. There is no way. There is no space for your voice. There is no vote. There are no dreams. There is only room for the beat." p222

Final Review

(thoughts & recs) This is one demanding book, but I felt it was worth the challenges and discomfort to read through to the end. It's a brilliant form: a community deals with a terrible crime in the loss of both a murder victim and an innocent young man accused of the crime. Set in during the crack epidemic of the 80's,

My 3 Favorite Things:

✔️ The pace here is brilliant --;breakneck and jangley.

✔️ I think experiencing the gas lighting along with the characters is both completely fresh, stylistically, and also a compelling reading experience.

✔️Really excellent dialogue: "“Hey, girl, you up?” Anita’s question was rhetorical; nobody was up at five thirty in the morning. Awake, yes. Up, no. “Okay, right. Listen, yeah,” Wanda mumbled. “He didn’t come home.” “Girl.” Oh, Wanda was up now. And worse, her friend was quiet— no string of laughter or commiserate cursing or fast-talking advice— just silence on the telephone. Anita heard rustling in the background on Wanda’s end. The small sound did nothing to cover the heartache seeping into the hush. Wanda sighed. “Girl, listen—” “Stop.”" p41

✔️ "I was wrong, she thought. Come to find out you can’t have a missing son and be a good mother at the same time. A warning sign to every relative and neighbor here. Don’t be like her. Don’t be like that mother sitting at the front."p54 Reynolds digs deep into this character and the grief she feels, without hurting her and making us watch. It's a careful and artistic balance. For a reader to stick in on a harrowing story, the author must have mercy. Well done here.

✔️ "Her world, formed by the boundaries of Spanish Harlem, had rules. There were the chuckleheads and the citizens , the nasty bitches and the churchgoers, the voters and the lazy. Twin prided herself in knowing who was who, where each and every one of them spent their free time and laid their heads. She knew her neighbors; she knew her neighborhood." p108

Content Notes: missing person, law enforcement, police, poverty, sex work, drugs, drug use, overdose, SA, gr*pe, child SA,

Thank you to April Reynolds, Knopf, and NetGalley for an accessible digital arc of THE SHAPE OF DREAMS. All views are mine.

[Stacy40pages · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one a lot, especially when it was following Twin. I loved her shock at the community and how the regular community members were the ones using. It perfectly showed how the crack epidemic took over urban communities. Some of it was slower for me but I think a lot of others, audiences that it’s more for, will get a lot out of it. This was a powerful and emotional story.

“There’s a reason it’s named ‘crack’. Every problem, every hurt tumbles into it. And spellbound, two women watch their pain fall into an abyss. Crack’s chasm is so deep they never hear their hurts hit bottom.”

Read if you like:
-Urban fiction
-Stories that take place in 80’s
-Grief stories

The Shape of Dreams comes out 2/2.

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was super compelled by the story of The Shape of Dreams by April Reynolds.

Our story takes place in the mid-1980s in East Harlem. When Twin Johnson finds the body of 12 year old Tyrone Jackson on the sidewalk in front of her house, she does the one thing her uncle has told her never to do: call the police. It sets a chain of events into action to find out who the murderer is. More than that, it’s a story about the neighborhood. Tyrone’s mother Anita, a postal worker and Army widow, is determined to find out who killed her son, rattling the neighborhood. East Harlem is made up of dreamers, including a pastor holding it together after his church burns down, a young woman with a voice like Whitney Houston and Wanda, whose own son is constantly being picked up by the police for things he may or may not have done. Thus unfolds a heartbreaking story of East Harlem and the quest for justice.

This novel is lovely. Watching the story unfold as the neighborhood tries to solve this murder warmed my heart. It seems the police aren’t interested in helping, but this neighborhood keeps pushing. I loved the perspectives we got and the angles it added to the story. I loved Anita and Wanda’s friendship and its struggles. It made the story feel rich. When Tyrone’s murderer is revealed, if really did shock me and the impact is felt throughout the last section of the book.

I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it when it comes out next year.

Thank you to Knopf for this physical ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Ellen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning and heartbreaking novel that is very relevant today. With heavy themes of a broken justice system, motherhood, Grief, and drugs, this book gutted me emotionally. All of the characters are so complex, relatable, and interesting. I felt so many emotions as I read from sadness to rage. While the book takes place in the 80s I now realize how far we really haven’t can come as a society since this all could have taken place in today’s world. I will never forget this book or the characters. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Madilyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel explores motherhood, grief, drugs, and the failings of our justice system set in 1980s Harlem. While technically historical fiction, it highlights how much work is left to be done as this story could have easily taken place today.

I will start off by saying this is a great book once you're done with it, but it took some time to really get into it. The writing style also took some getting used to as the perspective kept shifting between different characters and their internal thoughts, but not always in the traditional labeled chapter by chapter way. By the last 1/2 to 1/3 though I was sunk pretty deep into the story and the unfolding of the final bits and twists leading up to Tyrone's murder.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the advanced copy of this book.

[Sara]

Can be cutsh justic a dream
can live at save place sheap one
world refuse our color hand
its widen birth
long time enthquick took over our land
we pray for justic and be save
shadow of dream
souition cant be from far
its our cave
its our fall
must be big enter to our soul
from our ash creat justic
its safe plane
its time without crim

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confetti, Rumor, and the Cost of Being Right: On “The Shape of Dreams” and the Neighborhood as a Moral Machine
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | February 3rd, 2026


Watercolor Piece by Demetris Papadimitropoulos

Confetti is supposed to mean joy. In April Reynolds’s “The Shape of Dreams,” it arrives as weather – a civic pollen that drifts down on people who have not been forgiven by the city, who have not even been properly seen. When a woman known as Twin mounts a milk crate and bellows, “Our vote don’t count!,” the paper scraps that whirl around her don’t sanctify the moment so much as mock it, as if the metropolis itself were shrugging: that’s nice, now keep moving. It is a finale that feels less like a curtain call than an indictment, and it clarifies what Reynolds has been doing all along: writing a neighborhood epic about who gets to be narratable, and at what cost.

Reynolds sets her novel in East Harlem in the mid-eighties, but the book’s pulse is not archival. The decade is there – the radios, the block-by-block grind, the blare of the World Series bleeding through a building’s walls – yet what matters is the ongoing condition of being governed at a distance. “The Shape of Dreams” is a neighborhood novel that refuses the consolations of a single hero. Instead it builds its drama from the friction between private need and public story, between what people know in their bodies and what the city is willing to recognize as truth.

A boy named Tyrone is murdered, and a Chinese shopkeeper, Wo Ren, is blamed. The case becomes a civic fable: simple enough to travel, sharp enough to bruise. Into this churn steps Reverend Carl – small, charismatic, hungry for consequence – who opens an organizing space called the Institute and discovers what every would-be savior eventually learns: that a neighborhood can love you and still devour you. Carl’s speeches offer a kind of borrowed confidence. People line up in the rain. Plans that once felt fanciful begin to sound plausible: a cleaner street, a safer block, maybe even a little dignity. But the book is ruthless about what it takes to sustain that feeling. The Institute’s “victories” depend on consensus, and consensus depends on someone being clearly right and someone being clearly wrong. When the truth refuses to cooperate, the scaffolding trembles.

Around this public crisis, Reynolds braids the book’s true engine: women keeping the world alive by inches. Anita and Wanda, both mothers, are pulled into addiction’s loop, then into a precarious, almost monastic recovery organized around the smallest possible unit of time: one more bite of soup, one more hour behind a locked door, one more night watching a boy’s chest rise and fall. That boy, Daryl, becomes the novel’s quiet moral center, not because he is saintly, but because he is practical. He feeds. He listens. He learns how to manage adult terror without being given the language for it. The tenderness Reynolds grants him is unsentimental, and therefore devastating.


Watercolor Piece by Demetris Papadimitropoulos

Reynolds’s great subject is not crime so much as the social machinery that turns crime into narrative and narrative into policy. The novel understands how quickly a community can be conscripted into a story it did not author. A rumor becomes a platform. A platform becomes a moral identity. People begin to speak about “justice” as if it were a destination rather than a process. Carl, intoxicated by attention, points his finger and discovers that fingers can be weapons even when they never touch a trigger. The book’s political intelligence resides in these small, ordinary recognitions: how righteousness can feel like relief; how relief can become cruelty.

If you have read neighborhood mosaics like “The Women of Brewster Place” or city choruses like “Let the Great World Spin,” you will recognize the architecture – a wide cast, a communal conscience, a place that behaves like a character. But Reynolds’s music is her own. She writes with a sly, sermon-inflected lyricism that can pivot from streetwise comedy to biblical gravity in a single paragraph. Her sentences have the courage of accumulation: they pile detail the way a block piles history, until the reader feels not merely informed but enclosed. You smell the wet jackets. You hear the taps on a floor that might be rain or might be someone at the door.

One of Reynolds’s sharpest formal inventions is her use of broadcast – particularly baseball – as counter-melody. The Mets rise and collapse in real time while lives do the same, and the play-by-play keeps insisting on drama even as another drama, more consequential, unfolds off to the side. The effect is not mere irony. It is an argument about what gets to count as public feeling. A city can come to its feet for a ball skidding past first base and stay seated for a young person being handcuffed in a courthouse hallway. Reynolds doesn’t scold the reader for that. She simply renders it, and the rendering does the shaming.

Reynolds is also unusually honest about ambition �� especially the kind that dresses itself as moral calling. Carl confesses, in a moment both comic and terrifying, that he once hoped for assassination – not because he longs for death, but because he longs for the stamp of importance. He wants ticker-tape parades, photographs with presidents, a holiday in his honor. Morning, almost twenty years older, answers with a counter-theology of decency: what if you are meant to be good rather than great? What if the work is one person at a time, one meal, one phone call, one apology you cannot make glamorous? The novel’s tension, in many ways, is the tension between these two definitions of purpose.


Watercolor Piece by Demetris Papadimitropoulos

Morning herself is drawn with painful precision. She is not merely “the mother” of the accused; she is a woman pinned between shame and love, between the desire to protect her child and the fear of what that protection costs a community that has finally begun to believe it deserves better. Reynolds refuses to romanticize maternal feeling. Morning’s memories arrive like fragments she’s afraid to touch. The love is there, but it is not a simple, redeeming river. It can be a flood, too.

Reynolds keeps circling the same question from multiple angles: what does a person owe a place that has already decided how to misunderstand them? Obligation here is both blessing and shackle. Carl feels “powerful” in Morning’s arms, but the power is partly borrowed – a balm against humiliation, a way to feel larger than his small church, his small slice of influence. Morning recognizes something else: mother love, that unnerving mix of tenderness and inspection, erotic heat competing with the urge to hold him steady, to check him, to keep him from tumbling into the kind of public foolishness men can mistake for destiny.

The novel is thick with objects that carry civic meaning. There are umbrellas shaking out rain, bean stew, handcuffs that arrive like punctuation, a milk crate that holds more truth than a podium. There is the blue light bulb Twin screws into her closet, bathing old “respectability” clothes in jazz-club glow – a visual joke that turns into a small elegy for abandoned ambition. And there is orange, returning not as tidy symbol, but as the color of improvised rescue: knit caps, sneakers, and a beret, tokens of warmth and visibility handed to people who have become hard to look at.

Again and again, Reynolds invokes the “power of meanwhile” – the way mischief and distraction keep happening alongside the moment you thought was the moment. Her baseball counterpoint is the most obvious instance, but the deeper insistence is structural: history does not wait for your epiphany. While Carl and Morning fight quietly about decency and greatness, men cheat and kill, a city rises for a ball skidding past first base, and your private catastrophe becomes someone else’s background noise.


Watercolor Piece by Demetris Papadimitropoulos

One reason “The Shape of Dreams” feels contemporary is its understanding of how quickly moral certainty metastasizes. The Institute’s members do not simply condemn a scapegoat; they enjoy being righteous together, tasting a form of upward mobility in that righteousness. When the certainty collapses, the grief is not only about Tyrone. It is also about narrative – the loss of a story that made the neighborhood feel legible to power, and the terror of what “they” will say when the story changes.

The book’s women demonstrate a different ethic: not greatness but maintenance. Keisha and the seven mothers arrive at Carl’s apartment like a delegation from reality. They scold him into warmth, strip off his wet jacket, tell him to take off his socks – then insist he do the thing leadership actually requires: help the girl the neighborhood now despises. “It’s not just a place for the innocent,” Keisha says of the Institute, and the line lands as both rebuke and creed.

Lara is one of Reynolds’s most provocative creations precisely because the novel will not translate her into a single motive. In court, she can generate a flurry of explanations – audition wounds, city lessons, violence as first option – and then, when pressed, she offers the simplest one: “Because I could.” The line is chilling not because it is nihilistic, but because it is ordinary. It is the sound of agency stripped of romance. It forces the reader to hold two truths at once: that systems shape behavior, and that a person can still choose the worst of what the system has taught them.

Reynolds’s courtroom sequence is a master class in quiet violence. The judge’s demand for “order” does not calm the room so much as expose what order often means in public life: the compression of messy truth into a narratable outcome. Reporters whisper like blades. A lawyer’s hand becomes both comfort and leverage. Morning’s prepared speech collapses into a single stuttered sentence – “She didn’t mean it” – and the simplicity of the plea, shifting under pressure, reveals how little space the system reserves for human contradiction.


Watercolor Piece by Demetris Papadimitropoulos

Reynolds also restores the victim to personhood. Tyrone is not only “the case” that ignites organizing and outrage; he is a boy with a body that tires, a mind that wanders, a hunger for books and a fear that comes in fragments. In an era when tragedy is routinely converted into content, this insistence on dimensionality feels like its own kind of protest.

Even the title can be read as diagnosis. Dreams in this book are not airy. They have shape because they must navigate constraints. Carl’s dream is greatness cut from someone else’s martyrdom. Morning’s dream is decency as survival. Twin’s dream is improvement without self-betrayal – “here, always here, I just wanted it to be a little better.” Anita and Wanda’s dream is bliss, that dangerous word the book treats like contraband. Daryl’s dream is a future small enough to be possible.

If the novel sometimes lets its intelligence show – if a few figures briefly feel more emblematic than fully dimensional – the ambition is nonetheless bracing. Reynolds has written a social novel that does not confuse explanation with excuse, and that knows the camera’s hunger is not the same as justice. By the end, you do not feel comforted. You feel implicated, which may be one definition of what serious fiction is for. Its anger is earned; its mercy, hard-won. You close the book hearing rain on a jacket, and a crowd whispering.

My rating: 88 out of 100.

[James B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ebook. A really tough novel set in East Harlem in the mid-eighties when crack is becoming an unthinkable plague. Anita is thrown into her own version of hell as her twelve year old boy, Tyrone, is strangled to death and left on the street under mounds of garage backs. As the murder goes unsolved, we follow a small group of Harlem residents who are all affected by the death in different ways. A heartbreaking and brutal look at a time and place.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, so I'm going to be on my soapbox in a minute. AAKnopf gifted me "The Shape of Dreams" by April Reynolds. To simplify it, the story puts back in the mid 80s, East Harlem, a boy is found murdered, a resident (Twin) finds the body and breaks the rule of "don't call the cops", and I suppose you can say the ripple effect of this one event moves to the entire community. 

    The story follows Twin, Anita (Mother of the murdered boy, Tyrone), and Wanda (Anita's friend). This is absolutely a story about community, one that has been failed and forgotten. Split-second decisions, seeking justice, racism, the Mets. The terrible pull of drug addiction and the mourning of a child by a grief stricken mother. This is a book about strength, and coming together. This is a book that deserves to be read, as it feels fresh and of the moment (sadly). This is tough subject matter, but its important to read.

     Now, my soapbox moment... I've read some not so great reviews from people, especially yt ones, who didnt give it a great rating because it made them uncomfortable. I cannot say it enough, some of you need to learn to sit with that uncomfortable feeling and check your privilege. I need you to be better readers and realize that your sunshine and roses life isnt the one that everyone experiences. Reading is how you gain empathy and understanding. You are uncomfortable reading about it? Try living it.  Authors put so much work into books, and it feels terribly lazy as a reader and unfair to the writer to rate a book poorly because, God forbid, someone took you out of your comfort zone. 

[John Waites · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shape of Dreams by April Reynolds is set in mid-1980s East Harlem and opens with a gut-punch: the murder of 12-year-old Tyrone Jackson. What follows is less a traditional mystery and more a community portrait-grief rippling outward through mothers, dreamers, a struggling pastor, and neighbors desperate for justice during the backdrop of the Mets' 1986 season.
Reynolds has a real gift for emotional resonance. When the novel works, it really works-the final quarter is powerful, focused, and feels like the true heart of the book.
Unfortunately, getting there is a slog. The first 3/4 felt repetitive and disjointed, with uneven pacing that made me disengage more than once. The book's description promises three women actively solving the murder, but instead the investigation happens mostly off-page, leaving major gaps
—especially around how the police identify the killer. Even the Mets thread quietly disappears by the end.

There's a strong story here, but it feels overextended. This might have shined as a tighter novella. Emotionally rich and socially aware, yes-but structurally messy and not fully satisfying for me.
I received an advance ARC from NetGalley /Knopf for a honest review

[Sue Ouellet-Cofsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a truly difficult story to read for several reasons. The pain, the pain was absolutely brutal. I've never had a child and can't imagine the pain of that loss but man could I feel it through the authors writing. The story itself feels disjointed and all over the place and I have to think that it's by design to truly throw you off and put you in that messy frame of mind. I also never paid attention to the horrors of NYC and it's Burroughs when I was in my late teens early 20's as I was from a very small town in Northern Maine and had no real frame of reference so the things these women had to deal with were so horrifying to me. (Although not much has changed in today's world unfortunately but my mind is now wide open and I SEE and abhor it). The ending threw me a bit but I could also see how powerful Twin ended up being in that moment.

[Clair · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the first 75% to be repetitive and arduous to get through. I thought the last 25% was pretty amazing and the heart of the novel. I am left feeling glad that I finished it but kind of battered and bewildered by the entire experience.

I received an e-arc from netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Shape of Dreams by April Reynolds is set in 1980's Harlem and highlights a trio of women as they face challenges in their neighborhood and families. The book begins with the murder of Anita's son Tyrone. His body is discovered by Twin, another neighbor. Tyrone's death sets into motion major changes in Anita's, her friend Wanda's, and Twin's lives. This book is a microcosm of how life was like during that time and location. The police are seen as suspect and drugs are rampant. Still, people dream of a future better life for themselves. The community is pushed together and pulled apart. It is a stirring tale of grief and hopes for the future.

Thank you to Knopf for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

[Michael Berquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a stunning tour-de-force. In The Weight of Dreams, April Reynolds masterfully weaves together many stories of characters from a city on the brink. The language is powerful and evocative. The novel snakes its’ mystery through powerful prose with many clean twists and crisp resolutions. Although it can be profane and difficult to read at times, It is a must read for every American citizen in our time. Highly recommended.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very moving story of Spanish Harlem in the Eighties. Heartbreaking characters and situations. A death brings neighbors together but also threatens to tear their community apart. This is such an emotional and vividly written story. Thank you NetGalley for providing the ARC.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A snapshot of NYC life, in the 80s in the Spanish Harlem neighborhood. Three women's lives are intertwined through the tragic murder of a young boy. What was captured so beautifully were the internal and external lives of not only the women, but the people and neighborhood itself. This was a quietly devastating read and yet, not without hope.

I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.

[Annahita · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Shape of Dreams by April Reynolds is one of those books that feels both devastating and necessary. It’s powerful, beautifully written, and so, so sad, the kind of novel that pulls you into a community’s grief and doesn’t let you look away.

Set in East Harlem in the mid-eighties, the story begins when Twin Johnson discovers the body of Anita’s son, Tyrone, on the sidewalk and makes the dangerous decision to call the police. What follows is a ripple effect that exposes how fragile safety and justice can be in a neighborhood already suffocating under poverty, policing, and the lure of the crack den that sits like a shadow over everything. Anita’s determination to find answers is heartbreaking, and the novel’s portrait of East Harlem is so vivid it feels like the neighborhood itself becomes a living, breathing character.

At the center are Anita, Wanda, and Twin, three women bound by tragedy and circumstance, navigating a world stacked against them as they try to protect their children, hold onto their dignity, and keep moving forward. The friendships here feel hard-won and real, and Reynolds captures the tension between surviving day to day and daring to hope for something better.

This is not an easy read, but it’s an unforgettable one. By the time the story reaches the summer of 1986, the collective mourning, the fight for justice, and the community's resilience hit with full force. The Shape of Dreams is heartbreaking, vibrant, and deeply human, and a book I won’t stop thinking about for a long while.

[Roslyn Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Shape of Dreams by April Reynolds is a powerful and emotionally charged novel that explores themes of motherhood, grief, addiction, and the deep flaws in our justice system. Though set in the 1980s, the story feels strikingly relevant today highlighting how many of these societal issues remain unresolved. The characters are beautifully written: layered, relatable, and unforgettable. Their pain and resilience stayed with me long after I finished reading. Reynolds has a gift for evoking raw emotion, and I found myself moved to tears and anger more than once. While the pacing and structure occasionally felt uneven, the novel’s emotional depth and social commentary make it a compelling read. The writing is evocative, and the story’s impact is undeniable. This is a book that will stay with me. I’ll never forget the characters or the truths it revealed. I received an advance review copy for free, and I’m leaving this review voluntarily. This is my first read by this author and I will definitely read more. Thanks #netgalley for the ARC. #theshapeofdreams

[Medaliz C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the lyrical exploration of a neighborhood in mourning. While the catalyst of the story is the tragic murder of a 12 year old boy in 1980s East Harlem, the novel transcends the typical crime thriller. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful meditation on community and the long shadows cast by injustice.

What struck me most was how timely this story feels. Although set decades ago, the ripple effects of the crime and the subsequent police involvement feel just as urgent and relevant in 2026 as they would have in the 80s.

While I was initially drawn in by the mystery of the crime, I quickly found myself much more invested in the rich, complex lives of the characters. April Reynolds has a gift for characterization, particularly in the profound and moving friendship between Anita and Wanda. Their bond served as the emotional heartbeat of the book for me. I highly recommend this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the advanced reader copy.

[Anita Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This intriguing novel is a complex character study of three women from East Harlem who struggle to find justice in the 80s .
Although the novel centers around a murder, it’s far more than a murder mystery but a tour de force to a neighborhood’s
resilience amidst a horrifying murder and a drug epidemic that haunts them.

Perhaps the star of the novel is a woman named Mathilda “Twin” Johnson, who discovers the murdered boy’s body, and
later finds herself reluctantly playing the part of “savior” to two women tortured by the death of one son and the endangerment
of another son. An unlikely hero, Twin Johnson is so well-drawn that readers long for her to be real: if she were real, we’d love
to seek her down-to-earth advice on how to handle life’s difficulties. Twin reminded this reader of Pilate, a memorable character
in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.

Reynolds’ prose moves from gritty to lyrical depending on the scene, but her voice rings true—right on the mark as a storyteller
and chronicler of the human spirit’s longing for justice.

[Candy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was invited by the publisher to review this book. In 1980s East Harlem, Twin discovers the body of Tyrone, the son of Anita, a hardworking widow. Calling the police sets off a chain of events that disrupts their community. Anita, joined by her outspoken friend Wanda and the formidable Twin, pursues justice amid pressure from a local reverend and the shadow of a basement crack den. During the Mets’ 1986 season, the neighborhood ultimately comes together to mourn, seek answers, and hold on to hope.

Though the plot is heavier, that does not detract from this really well done book. I especially loved the community and the neighborhood within these pages, major flaws and all. I truly felt as if I was wandering the streets of East Harlem in the 1980s, everything felt so real.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House/Alfred A. Knopf for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A haunting and unflinching story set around the murder of a 12-year-old boy during the mid-1980s in East Harlem. At the heart, though, is community, the injustices they face together and the solidarity and sisterhood they forge. The Shape of Dreams is a brutal look at the social injustices of the era, but injustices that remain to this day. Yet, there is an underlying defiantness that pulls both the community and the reader through. Reynolds is a magical weaver of creating a sense of place. Through her words, the book is very grounded in the location and cultural context of the era she's reflecting.

This book is one that will stay with me, especially because of the strong characters that brought the book to life, and I look forward to following the future works of this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with an eArc in exchange for an honest review.

[Firetruckmama · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher, for which I thank them.

“The Shape of Dreams” is by April Reynolds. Wow … this is a really heavy book. The death of a child brings the community together - but it also threatens to tear it apart. While I had an easy time getting into the story (Ms. Reynolds writing is wonderful), at times this book felt overwhelmingly difficult to get through. The pain of loss, the pain of addiction, the pain of living are all delved into deeply.

[The Page Ladies Book Club · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Shape of Dreams pulled me straight into 1980s East Harlem and did not let go. This one felt alive—like the neighborhood itself was breathing, hurting, hoping. Anita, Wanda, and Twin were unforgettable, and the way community, loss, and resilience tangled together stayed with me long after I turned the last page.

[Elle Ferranna · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you lived through the era, your hackles will rise because you'll realize that the definition of displacement should be extended to include profound structural and societal failure. Love the colloquial language, and appreciate that this work is akin to dreams, time isn't limenal, but it impacts all involved!

[Libriar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in 1980s East Harlem, this was a difficult book for me to get into. The book centers around the murder of a child and takes place in a community ravaged by the crack epidemic, while three women come together to try to seek justice. There is a lot to get through before everything comes together in the end. ARC courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley.

[Katherina Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shocking and brutal. I live in a small town and this was a culture shock. Well written, descriptive and sad. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the complementary digital ARC. I will be thinking of this book for a long time. This review is my own opinion.

[JXR · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous book with some fantastic and amazing writing. I would recommend this one. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.