The Dream Hotel: A Read with Jenna Pick: A Novel

Written by Laila Lalami

Narrated by Frankie Corzo and Barton Caplan

NATIONAL BESTSELLER ● READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY ● From Laila Lalami—the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a “maestra of literary fiction” (NPR)—comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 4, 2025
• ISBN: 9798217076406

Laila Lalami

Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a US national bestseller, won the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. Lalami's writing appears regularly in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Nation, Harper's, Guardian and New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for The Dream Hotel

[Laurie Copeland · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Voice actor did really well for these characters, they should have seperate scoring system. Book could have been great, just had trouble buying in to a lot of it. What Mother of infants who was unexpectedly and unfairly seperated from them wouldn’t constantly need to know how the babies were? Wondering about each and every milestone, like their first words…and a year later their first steps and everything in between. Wanting to see videos, pictures etc. often.

Also would have appreciated more of the back story about how the world got to where it was in this story.

The main character was a young college history teacher. Yet her vocabulary was that of a 65 year old retired English professor. Or author with a thesaurus close by. . She used words have never heard before.

End of the book the main character’s friends and relationships were stated to be of huge importance, yet minimal development of the actual relationships with said friends throughout the book. Never got to know them.

The concept for the book was great and I think book could also have been a 5.

[Mary Ann Maronski · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The story was good and I was interested, I may give it another go as an ebook. The audiobook is horrible. I was listening to a portion of the story where the intent was I think to indicate that information had been redacted from a document that was being read. Every few words there was this annoying beep (like when expletives are bleeped out). It was so bad in my ears that I couldn’t stand to finish the story.

[Momreadsbooksinbtwn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book definitely gave me some anxiety. While it is supposed to be scientific and futuristic, some of the technology seems present and current day and almost pretty scarey that what happens on this story could actually become reality. Sometimes it was difficult to determine what was reality and what was a dream/nightmare, which was probably the intent. While I did enjoy the story, some of the plot seemed to be all over the place. Wish they would have tied in the role that Julie played and maybe have Sara get in touch with her and possibly have Julie help the other people that were still incarcerated. I also didn’t quite understand the purpose of her cousin continually popping up. As for the audio, the chapters of a memo or email were audibly annoying. The continual repeat of date, timestamp, and case number in addition to the audible beep when the CRO’s name was redacted, made those chapters unbearable to listen to. I had to stop the audio and read the ebook for those chapters.

[kayanelson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is fairly relevant. It amplifies how little privacy we have in today’s world of technology. And it drives close to home the our right to due process can be taken away. However, I didn’t care for this book. It took too long to set up the background. Halfway through the book, I didn’t care what happened to these people. And then, the ending, Sara’s release from detention, happened so quickly.
I think I’ll be done with this author.

[kcshankd · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really didn't _enjoy_ this book. It made my skin crawl in ways that comparable dystopian classics have not. I suppose because this world is so immediate and recognizable.

I felt dirty and grungy and run down just as Sara did during her detention. Just a remarkable work that was an uncomfortable read.

[kalliegrace · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is well written, but so infuriating that I can't rate it higher. I was steaming with rage the entire time. This is happening now, just not with dream surveillance obviously. People are profiled and detained and stuck in Kafkaesque hell far too often.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reason read. this was on the Women's long list but did not make the cut. it looks at government and acadmia overreach and the dangers of social scoring. Glad to have read this one. near future, dystopic novel often do not make it on literary fiction lists.

[bblum_10 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sara lives a normal life in Southern California; husband and toddler twins plus a job that requires some travel. Sleep is an issue so like many others she has a sleep device implanted. What she doesn’t know is that the corporation that created these sleep devices can monitor your dreams. She is arrested/detained to prevent a future crime. The detention center is somewhere near Palmdale, the guards are heinous and her future bleak, what to do? And this is how and why we must resist authoritarian regimes. Setting is near future- 2024. I like the book but it didn’t keep me glued to the pages.

[castlelass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set in a near dystopian future, Moroccan American protagonist Sara Hussein is detained at the Los Angeles airport after a trip to London. She is told she has been flagged as “high risk for committing a crime.” An algorithm has been employed to assess each person, and Sara’s score is slightly over the threshold. At the “retention” center (which is run like a prison), she finds out that a device previously implanted to help her sleep has been used to capture data and surveil her dreams. The algorithm uses this data and there is no way to legally fight it, since it is considered proprietary (Note: This has really happened with respect to algorithms).

Lalami extrapolates the current state of harvesting personal data for corporate profit. She also criticizes the bureaucracy used to find trivial reasons to keep detainees from being released, or even to schedule a hearing. It is easy to feel Sara's mounting frustration with surveillance and bureaucracy. To avoid potentially incriminating dreams, she must try to tamp down her anger. The insertion of a new perspective at the half-way point interrupts the flow, but otherwise, it is a creative approach that calls attention to modern society’s trends toward restricting individual freedoms. Recommended to fans of dystopian and speculative fiction.

[rmarcin-630843 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sara is arrested and taken to Madison, a Forensic Observation Facility. The Risk Assessment Administration used her dreams to claim that she is going to harm her husband. Initially, she is to stay for 21 days, but the time keeps getting extended. She is concerned that her dreams are presenting evil thoughts and when the RAA examines them, they use the info against her.
This is a terrifying look at how government overreach and technology can be used to manipulate and imprison people for no valid reason.

[dianeham · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is prescient and important. But I found the ending hurried and trite.

[deslivres5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dystopian near future where AI and algorithms can detain you for crimes you have yet to commit. The algorithms even use your dreams in its determination!
Sara, a museum archivist, a wife and a mother of toddler twins winds up being sent to a retention center where her original 3-week observation window continually gets extended for trivial reasons.
The overarching detention center with its constant surveillance is aggravating beyond belief.
A cautionary tale about technology in our lives, to be sure.

[katiekrug · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A highly readable novel set in the near future, where government and tech use all sources of data - including dreams - to determine the risk individuals pose to others. A middle class wife and mother is caught up in this web and sent to a "retention" facility because the authorities believe she may kill her husband. It's an all-too-believable premise, and Lalami keeps the pages turning with a (mostly) well-paced story. There were some threads of the story that were left dangling that I (and members of my book club) found frustrating, but overall, it was a good read and sparked a lot of thoughtful discussion.

4.25 stars

[sparemethecensor · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really liked The Dream Hotel, though I also found it a stressful and upsetting read as it felt so near future to the surveillance state. Excellent story well told.

[nivramkoorb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is my 3rd novel by Lalami and all have been excellent. I do like dystopian novels and this one is especially relevant because of what is currently going on in our country. Sara is an archivist at the Getty Museum in L.A and upon returning from a trip to London she is pulled aside at the airport and told that her profile shows that she above the 500 risk line for potential crime. She needs to go to a 21 day retention center to get her score down. So begins a nightmare for Sara and tale of caution for us all as AI begins to take over and algorithms are in charge of the decision making. Throw in less than nice human guards with arbitrary power and you have a middle class woman on a downward spiral. Lalami is very creative and the book is a good read. A little slow with a lot of detail and I agreed with other reviews that the ending felt rushed. Otherwise a book for our times and an introduction to an excellent writer.

[christinedux · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Depressing to read, but powerful and disturbing.

[hccpsk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the not so distant future, a few large companies monitor everything through the multitude of devices used — including one that promises to make sleep more productive by managing dreams. After a series of mishaps on her way home from a business trip to London, Sara Hussein gets detained and her dreams are used as evidence that she may try to hurt her husband in the future. So begins Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel, and her real and metaphorical nightmares have just started. I enjoyed this dystopian look into the future, and Lalami’s usually excellent writing made up for the slightly slow start and seemingly hurried finish. Readers who enjoy books about a surveillance-heavy future and don’t mind reading a lot of weird dreams will enjoy The Dream Hotel.