The bonds of friendship. The possibilities of magic. The power of intuition. First the missing assignment, then the broken angel, and now the accident. Bad luck comes in threes, but Tara never suspected the third thing would be as horrendous as this ... When Troy Daniels, the guy Tara likes from school, is critically injured in a car crash, Tara needs help from her friends in the Circle. While Troy struggles for life, the girls draw on all their magic to try to turn the bad luck around. But when Tara's dreams start to become more real than waking life, she is forced to undertake a dangerous quest in the eerie realm of Gamova. Who is the imprisoned prince? How are Tara's dreams connected to Troy Daniels? And why is she too afraid to share them with the Circle? One thing becomes clear - to save the prince, Tara needs to understand a lot more about Troy's mysterious life ...
Years ago, Melaina Faranda washed up on Thursday Island penniless and soaking, with a single change of clothes, only to be loaned an entire new wardrobe and given three jobs on the first day, including working at the local bakery. Someone gave her a house to live in, people took her out fishing and told stories, and a wonderful old islander gave her the same precious gift Edie receives before returning to Cairns.
Melaina has since traveled across Australia and around the world, with many elements of these journeys finding their way into her novels, including The Circle series and Big Sky, but she has yet to discover a place where there is more generosity and open-heartedness than that shown by the Thursday Islanders.
The story of Tara, who is a dreamer, she can see things in the dreams that appear to be real, in the book, after a boy at school slips into a coma, she starts dreaming of a strange oppressive world with a young version of the boy running around. The story is about Tara trying to maintain her life while at night becoming more concerned as odd things continue to happen in her dreams.
A nice enough story, but a bit unbelievable (the romance, not the fantasy). I have a low tolerance for dreams in books, and so I probably should've known better than to pick this up. About half this book is a 'dream' - but it's not strictly a dream, so maybe I'm being over critical. The character development is sufficient and pleasant enough, and the 'mystery' was enough to pull it together.
This book is a mix of teen reality and magic. I was a bit unsure about the teenage reality kind of thing but now I have to read the whole series to find out everyone's mystery.