dramastef's Full Review: Sidney Sheldon - Tell Me Your Dreams
You have to understand… Sidney Sheldon has a very special place in my literary heart. When I was in sixth grade, and attending a Catholic school (yes, taught by nuns), I snuck If Tomorrow Comes from my Grandfather’s bookshelf and proceeded to write a book report on it, leaving nothing out, from the prison rapes, the escapes, the jewelry heists… My classmates loved it. My teachers thought my parents should know what I was reading.
At any rate, I have since read everything that Mr. Sheldon has written and been very pleased with each… which is why it pains me to give this book a less than stellar review.
I’ve been rolling a few review ideas around in my head regarding this novel, and I just can’t come up with any way to do it without revealing a few major plot points. But, as the plot points I will reveal are revealed to the reader less than half way through the book, I don’t feel as bad as I might normally, if they weren’t revealed until the last three pages. So, the disclaimer: This review does reveal a few major spoilers in the plot.
Plot and Characters:
The novel opens introducing us to the heroine, Ashley Patterson. Although she cannot prove it, she feels and believes that she is being stalked by someone with murderous intentions. She comes home from work (in Silicon Valley) one day to find that all the lights in her apartment have been turned on. Another day she sees that her lingerie drawer has been ransacked.
In the next two chapters, we are introduced to Toni Prescott and Alette Peters who work at the same company with Ashley. Toni is six years younger than Ashley, born in England, she is a bit of a “wild child” with serious maternal issues. She is a wonderful singer, but her inner thoughts keep flashing back to her mother telling her she was no good and would never amount to anything. Toni likes to dress provocatively and go club hopping on the weekends. She despises Ashley because Ashley is everything she herself isn’t. Alette is eight years younger than Ashley. Born in Rome, she is a soft spoken, sweet artist who also has maternal issues. Though people around her keep telling her that she is an extraordinarily talented painter, she keeps hearing her mother tell her the contrary.
Though she currently has a very close relationship with her father, Ashley is haunted by the memory of her father forcing her to leave her High School sweetheart, Jim. She had planned to run away and be married to Jim, but he never showed up at the train station. When Ashley attends her ten year reunion, she learns that Jim was viciously murdered and castrated the morning they were supposed to meet. She is stunned and immediately suspects her father. When a man at work who has been bothering her meets the same fate after she complains to her father about him, Ashley is convinced that her father is behind these murders.
On a business trip to Canada, Toni meets her Internet boyfriend for the first time. He presents her with a beautiful emerald ring and is then murdered and castrated. Alette’s artist boyfriend back home in California is also killed in this same fashion. Upon returning home, Ashley finds on her bathroom mirror the message “You will die”. The deputy assigned to protect her is found the next morning in the alley, dead and castrated. When the emerald ring given to Toni is found in Ashley’s jewelry box and her fingerprints and DNA at each murder scene, she is arrested.
At this point, we are a little less than half way through the book. If you haven’t guessed from the review (I had already guessed from the novel), Ashley suffers from MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder). Toni and Alette are both alters which had been created by a traumatic experience (when Ashley was six and eight years old).
From this point backward, the novel had been gripping and enticing. I couldn’t put it down. After this, I was thoroughly disappointed. Ashley’s father persuades a criminal lawyer turned corporate lawyer, David Singer to return a favor and represent Ashley. The second half of the novel deals with the trial, the fighting psychiatrists: (“Multiple Personality Disorder is a real disorder”, “Multiple Personality Disorder isn’t a real disorder”), and Ashley’s treatment and introduction to her two alters in a state asylum. The most interesting part of this section was learning the horrific event that caused her fragile psyche to shatter as it did.
Writing Style, Motif, etc:
This novel was written in the third person, with insight into the minds of Ashley, Toni and Alette. The focus on MPD was interesting, but slow paced. It was frightening how someone can commit brutal murders, be released to an asylum for treatment and then released upon being deemed "cured".
I could tell that I was reading a Sidney Sheldon novel, but I missed the adventure, the world travels, the intrigue and thrilling plot twists to which I've become accustomed.
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