Ashley Winstead’s thriller ‘In My Dreams I Hold a Knife’ follows Jessica Miller as she becomes intertwined in the investigation of Eric’s, the brother of her murdered friend Heather, personal mission to get his sister justice. The story follows two timelines, the years in university and the scandals and betrayals that led towards the murder on Valentines day, and Jessica’s group off friends reunited and forced to face the truth ten years later at their homecoming event. 

I wasn’t a huge lover of this murder mystery, this mainly spurred by how insufferable a narrative voice Jessica was. She isn’t supposed to be likeable, but she spent most of her dialogues whining and claiming everyone forgets about her and she’s always second best. Some of this and these opinions were important for the plot but it the idea was clear enough and her own self-pity just really took away from many of the books events. There were also many plot conveniences included by Winstead that just felt like they were there not to benefit the story in its technique or believability, but make things easier for Winstead to not have to tidy up tricky plot holes when writing, the main case of this being Jess’ convenient loss of memory on the night that Heather was murdered. It was a really cheap solution to creating a mystery around a person directly involved in a set of events that led to murder. None of the characters were supposed to be particularly likeable, though I didn’t find myself really caring for any of them and also they all had some form of tragic backstory placed upon them, in most cases related to their fathers, which felt like it was included to add ‘relatable depth’ or ’shock value’ to the character development but in that being the case with the large majority of the cast of friends, it really didn’t result in being a significant, impactful or defining part of character building. 

The story was enjoyable enough, and the twist in the murder and climax of the plot was interesting, though I felt the book lacked in so many elements and was just an annoying listen at times, it wasn’t bad but noting amazing whatsoever.