A Dream of Trees

by Samantha Sotto Yambao

The door never changes, but the rooms behind it do. Bonsai artist Shiori Ametsuchi never knows where the door will lead her next. All she is sure of is that whoever she finds in these rooms will be dead before she leaves. Since she woke up without any memory of her past, Shiori has been thrust into a life of walking through a mysterious door and visiting people in their last moments. The door takes Shiori and the souls to rooms containing the present, past, and possibility, experiences the souls need to finally move on. Shiori is resigned to a life without a past, until she learns that like the people she visits, she is dying too. And Shiori knows too well what happens to people who die without knowing who they are. They get lost. Shiori races to discover her past, accompanied by Aiden, a man who will be dead by morning. While Shiori remembers nothing, Aiden cannot forget a single moment of his life, no matter how hard he tries. Together, they journey through burning rooms, dark rooms, rooms with monsters and angels, and rooms that aren’t rooms at all. As they piece together Shiori’s past, they learn the truth that lives between the border of loneliness and living, forgiveness and freedom, and death and dreams.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Magical Realism, Romantasy, Japan

326 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 30, 2019

About the author

Samantha Sotto Yambao is a professional daydreamer, aspiring time traveler, and speculative fiction writer based in Manila. She is the author of Water Moon, Before Ever After, Love and Gravity, A Dream of Trees, The Beginning of Always, and THE ELSEWHERE EXPRESS (Jan 2026)

Reviews

[Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a huge fan of Samantha Sotto. Her first book is one of my ultimate favorites. Of course, when I saw she was coming out with a new book, I was excited. A Dream of Trees exceeded my already high expectations. This was a major departure from my typical reads, but this book was absolutely stunning!!! Samantha is so descriptive and her words are so beautiful, you feel like you are really there. I truly adored every second of this book!!!

[Grace Gervacio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book was like enjoying my favorite genres all at once - a whole lot of mystery, a little bit of romance - woven together with wisdom and a good heart. The story is so wildly imaginative that I struggle to describe the feelings they evoked, yet it was so relatable in many ways. Genius!

[Ernesto P.Sotto · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't resist the temptation to read it much earlier so I pre-booked it @ $6.99. This is NOT a spoiler, but I have to objectively say that this is the best of the three books you have published so far! Loooong but definitely spellbinding! Bravo. More please.

[Sol · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Dream of Trees is a far different journey from Before Ever After and Love and Gravity. No romanticized ever after this time; rather, rose-colored lenses have to give way to facing the realities of life. But the element of time and love that transcends still resonate all throughout the journey of Aiden, Shiori, Sophie and the other characters.

It is difficult to tackle the theme about dying without getting too depressing, but following the characters as they deal with their guilt and learning to let go gives the reader that hope that the characters will find their light in the end. It also allows for introspection on the reader and his/her stand on the many current issues raised. On a lighter note, it was fun learning forgotten English terms and knowing more on how to care for the bonsai.

The book scratches on the surface topics such as suicide, homophobia, dementia and EJKs, among others. The story of Rey Arnaiz is a reminder of children who were killed and have become a part of the statistics in the drug war in the Philippines. While these topics were not fully explored, it can later serve as points of discussion in reading groups.

And what is a book of Sam without reference to the Philippines? This time, we get to know Rey Arnaiz and Bing Ramos, the ongoing killings in the drug war, and New Year's Eve traditions. Also, there are some points in the narrative that take inspiration from snippets of the author's life.

On the other hand, I felt that there were quite a handful of characters that by the time I got to the end page, the ones that are remembered are those whose stories we can relate to or made an impact.

Also, were it not for the perspective that the concept of time in the story is "not a train on a one-way track" or the references to the past selves of the characters, I might probably get lost, too, in navigating through the arcs of the characters.

Props to Sam for bravely taking on this work, that even if it departs from the familiar magic and fairytale, her gift of weaving words to bring her characters to life is not lost. Just as with her first two books, A Dream of Trees is also a movie in my mind (filled with "quotable quotes"). And great choice for Shiori's name (bookmark) who guided the characters in their journeys.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many thoughts on this one now that I'm done. The stories of Aiden & Shiori are interwoven that you have a hard time telling them apart. In the end, this is a beautiful story about connections, love, forgiveness and letting go.

“Life and death are on the opposite sides of a very thin line, Jiro. This tree has been brought to the very edge of this line many times for the very purpose of making it thrive. Each time it returns, it comes back with a few more scars, but is always more beautiful.”

"Every action we do, nurturing or not, has a response. It is the essence of what life is – a conversation. The moments we are truly alive are the moments that we share with someone else. Outside of that, we are just eating, breathing, and sleeping, biding our time until we die.”

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book Samantha Sotto has ever written, so far.

Beautifully written and so intrinsically woven that I just couldn't put it down. Started reading around midnight, telling myself the lie all bookworms tell themselves, from "just a few chapters" to "just one more chapter" until I finished the whole book and daylight is upon me. Ended up getting only 2 hours of sleep before I have to start my day but it was all so worth it.

I was already a huge fan since Before Ever After, and I just became an even bigger fan. As always, looking forward to the next book.

[Amy Zamora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book a lot and how it handled really tough subjects. I also really liked how Yambao intertwined all the characters at some point! Really nice story crafting. I was a little disappointed in the punch of the last 1/4 of the book. A lot happened and everything was supposed to be immensely impactful but found it fell a little bit flat. Still an amazing book!

[Wiebke (1book1review) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was enjoyable, despite all the deaths. I did enjoy finding out more about Aiden and Shiori and how their life is connected at the end.
Please be aware a lot of people die in different ways, so check trigger warnings if you need them.

[Luna Chandria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Dream of Trees is wonderful!
Imagine Doctor Who or Narnia, where you wouldn't know where the door leads you, or what's its purpose and why you're there. Imagine seeing someone else's life before you— are their lives any different from yours? Were they happy while they were still alive? Were they sad? Lonely and full of regrets? Imagine seeing yourself— your life and your memories. Did you always make the right decisions? Did you actually live or just merely surviving? How will you interpret your own life?
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This book has a lot of realizations about life, love, lost, regrets, forgiveness, letting go and moving on. Samantha's words are always this powerful and poignant. It will always makes you want to read more— every chapter's like every door. Full of stories from different people— I imagine reading Murakami's Novels where every books are connected from one another.
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Rey's story touches me the most (no spoilers here), it touches the very core of my humanity. How we wanted to save someone from injustices but can't do about it. And Alice's story— where she proves that love always wins in the end.
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I highly suggest this book (been a fan of her since Before Ever After and Love and Gravity). This will help you enjoy your life's journey and how every memory you will make will be one of your life's doors. Your life, your choice. You decide. ★★★★★ stars!

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shiori has no memory of who she is or of her past. All she can recall is that she once worked with bonsai trees. For a very long time, now, she has been entering various rooms. The door is always the same, but each room is very different. Some are not even a room. Each time she enters another room, the person in the room is about to die. She has witnessed many scenes of people’s lives, and she Is assuming that the person she is with must see the scene before they are able to pass into death. She has found that, those who do not know themselves, become lost when they die. So, this is necessary. But, will this never end?

I am a fan of Samantha Soto, so I had extremely grand expectations. And I was not disappointed! She has created another marvel, here, another valuable book. Not only are her characters exceptionally real and authentic to the reader, but her prose is exquisite. There were so many lines in this book that I had to stop to savor! I could not put this book down. Something exciting was always happening, and there were many surprises and twists and turns. Sotto authors intelligent books that not only present a sort of message to the reader, but they are stories which the reader must read carefully and thoroughly, in order to get the most out of the plot. This one is exceptional and cannot be missed.

[__lmnop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scars aren't memorials to pain. They're proof we've found the strength to heal.

The ritual of caring for a tree is no different from how we are talking to each other now. Every action we do, nurturing or not, has a conversation. The moments we are truly alive are the moments that we share with someone else. Outside of that, we are just eating, breathing, and sleeping, biding our time until we die.

Death is just another room to be alone.

Staying alive was simple. It was living that Haru found difficult.

A name is only important when there is someone around to call you by it.

Isn't that what living is? To love and be loved back?

Trust your dreams. You see better with your eyes closed than when you're awake.

Wherever hope died, it turned the warmest day into winter.

Loss is always on the other side of contentment. Waiting.

If he didn't find a real monster to hurt him, there were other ways to bleed. Maybe then, his father would find him important enough.

My pain consumed me. I let it take over my life. I thought I could make it stop by taking my own life,
but I was wrong.

"I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive him," Aiden said. "I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you to try and love yourself more than you hate him."

This is because death is not the end of you. It is
the birth of the person you are when every single thing you have accumulated throughout your life has been stripped away and left at the door.
Your body. Home. Wealth. Debt. Accomplishments. Failures. Love. Loss. Everything. You are standing at the beginning, Aiden. Nothing about you is finished.

Aiden wore short sleeves even when it was cold hoping that someone would notice the wish he had cut into his skin. No one did. The next year, he sliced deeper.

When you have learned to live alone and with so little as long as I have, you would be surprised how much easier it is to smile. It's when you're surrounded by everything that you want that it gets harder to notice the things that really make you happy.

When you dream, you don't think about anything except what you're doing at the exact moment. Your mind doesn't wander off to your next vacation or worry about how you're going to pay the rent. You can't distract or lie to yourself. What you see and feel in a dream is always the truth. When you're awake, you can't keep still. Your brain is hopping all over the place. Tomorrow. Yesterday. Ten years from now. That's why even if your eyes are open, you're barely able to see what's right in front of you.

They had grown up in a time when things were slower and people were not so quick to throw things away. They kept things and took care of them, and when they broke down, they tinkered with them and patched them up until they worked almost like new.

If she had known how fast her life would pass, Alice thought, she would not have wasted any of it thinking about anything other than the moment she was standing in George's arms were the only place where time could not find her and hurry her along to the next extremely important, absolutely urgent thing.

It's not the first time I've seen your scars, but I want you to know that it's the last time that I'm going to pretend that they aren't there.

We need to remember that death is the period at the end of a story, not the story itself.

Lies thrived in large, open spaces, but the truth lived in the overlooked.

Mind-body connection [...] You can't feel bad if you're not slumping your shoulders and staring at your feet. The kite pulls me out of my head and lifts my thoughts.

Hating someone else doesn't make you want to stop breathing. Hating yourself turns the air into broken glass. Every breath rips a path to your lungs

We look at tragedy and try to make sense of it by looking for fault. We'd rather feel guilty than acknowledge that life is random - that it doesn't need a reason for twisting and turning the way it does. Blame allows us to continue believing that we have some control over our fate.

"We've learned from our mistakes." "But what if we make new ones?" Aiden leaned against the headboard. "We will. That's what people do. We make mistakes. That's how we grow. But the choice we need to make is whether those mistakes will let us grow closer together or apart."

People and trees did not have very different needs. Air. Water. Warmth. Touch. Respect. Learning to care for one, taught you how to care for the other. Neither could be mastered in a day. They were lifelong tasks with a shared goal: that you do better at it, by whatever increment, than you did the day before.

No one can run from their pain forever. Not Jiro. Not you. You've held your camera in front of you your whole life, hiding behind it as you interrogated the world and chased all of your questions.
But there isn't anything to hide behind now and there are questions you need to answer for yourself. Who are you, Aiden? Are you that defeated man in that chair or are you the man who taught me how to bite down, hold on to a kite, and look up? Find yourself, Aiden. Then come and find me.

"All the souls you met, however way they died..." Aiden moved towards Shiori. "They had one thing in common. They all had to learn to let go. Of their fear. Of their anger. Of their dreams. Of everything they spent their lives holding on to. The rooms didn't teach them how to do that. You did. Now you have to teach yourself. You don't need my forgiveness or Sophie's. You need your own."

Life and death are on the opposite sides of a very thin line, Jiro. This tree has been brought to the very edge of this line many times for the very purpose of making it thrive. Each time it returns, it comes back with a few more scars, but is always more beautiful.

[Akda · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there is only 1 book humanity is allowed to read for a whole lifetime, it should be A Dream of Trees. Within the pages lie humanity's core. The then, now, being, is, was, and will be beautifully written in a medium that I was unable to put down once I started reading it. Each and every door resonated with me. Life. Death. Happiness. Forgiveness. Love. I am grateful for Samantha Sotto and her works. They help me process this journey we call life.

[Lois Vitt Sale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Nobody creates the paintings made by this author

I’ve read all of this author’s works and everyone of them are magical including this one. Do yourself a favor and stopping reading reviews and get the book.

[Lorzilee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t think I couldn’t have read this book at a more perfect time in my life. A few weeks ago, my dad passed away. But days leading up to the day we learned about it, I had been thinking about him incessantly—replaying memories, in what felt like an infinite loop. So now I wonder: what if me having doing so, what if that was my dad going through his doors. What if that was his nudge for me to hold on to, the memories of him, of what we shared. Maybe my dad was accompanied by an angel like Shiori or even Sophie. What if that was his version of a reassuring pat on my shoulder?

Strangely, I find comfort in that. But this is probably my grief showing.

In any case, this book was great.

[Nathanael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Dream of Trees is maybe my favourite book of 2025, so far.
It explores themes of self discovery, coming to terms with death and life's experiences, both good and bad, it deals with loss and acceptance and forgiveness.
The story follows the main protagonists Shiori and Aiden as they explore the lives of people who have passed on and then ultimately explore their own past lives through magical doorways.

As always I review the books I read in relation to how they make me feel and my emotional investment and this book, this wonderful story, affected my soul like no other book has, it left me reeling for days asking myself questions, reflecting on my life and doing serious soul searching. I love this book and hope everyone that reads it loves it as much as I do.

[Lisa Deleon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book makes you think on a deeper level of yourself and the things you want to, haven’t yet, or have already achieved in your life. Your strengths, your fears, and how those shape you as a person. But when you’re faced with your final day, the real question is… are you satisfied with how your life went, do you have any regrets? Hard feelings? Have you buried those unpleasant experiences and decisions you’ve made throughout your life in hopes that you don’t have to take when with you after you’re gone?

[Shine with Shauna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was quirky, but quirky in a good way.

When you are in the process of dying (think final minutes), someone visits you and helps you open your doors. These doors lead to some unfinished business/unresolved feelings that you need to process, before you pass. I found the whole possibility quite interesting. Cleverly creative!

(3.5 stars)

[Jen Silverman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded down. The beginning of the book was very promising, but it dragged in the middle, and then picked back up towards the end. I can’t say that I was surprised with what appears to be an intended twist. Nevertheless an enjoyable read. But i think this could have been written as a novella.

[Lauren Harlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book about death, regrets, forgiveness, and love. Sotto is incredibly talented at handling very difficult subjects with grace. Similar to Water Moon, she takes readers on a journey using doors and rooms as an analogy for these subjects. Definitely have a tissue box ready!

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samantha Sotto is an author we should all be talking f about! This book was gorgeous and tragic. It’s a book the helps us find the grace of forgiveness. And the peace of letting go.

[Peachy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samantha you gotta stop breaking my heart.

[Tron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a big thing for justice that can only exist in fiction.

[Rhianna G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samantha Sotto’s writing is an art.

This book caught me off guard. I think it will stay with me for a long time. I loved it.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, thought provoking, sad.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written but sad. She likes the idea of loops. Time/life looping again and again

[Debmeister · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh, so dreamy!

[Yvette · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.75

[Ashley Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emotional book. You may need tissues.

I thought it was a good story. And I was awed every time I learned about a connection between characters. It made me think a lot about loved ones I miss.

[Tamar Tsintsqiladze · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was perfect, but very sad

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

truly magical.