I can’t begin to say how much I loved this book. It’s about love and regret and longing, family and aging and in the background a look at a (future?) world made bleak by global warming. Charlie and Garrett have been friends since college and now Charlie is about to marry Cece at his beautiful lake home in Salish, Montana. Charlie a successful cardiac anaesthesiologist asks Garrett to look after Cece until he can arrive in Salish. They have not met before but for Garrett it is love at first sight, on a mad impulse he sends her an email on the eve of her wedding telling her how he feels. Charlie and Cece get married amidst the chaos of some of the wedding party and guest coming down with norovirus, but Cece leaves Charlie for Garrett. It’s a look at fractured love and how they try to mend the rift between the three of them. As they age and have families and reflect on their lives we see how the world also is growing darker and less stable. This will be one of my books of the year.

Dream State by Eric Puchner Cece is in Montana to marry her fiance, Charlie at his family's vacation home on the lake. But when his best friend Garrett shows her around and takes her on a hike, the course of all of their lives is changed forever. An epic novel which spans their entire lifetime, from the early 2000s to half a century later. Wow, what an amazing book this is! So much packed into it and yet it never felt unwieldy - I was drawn in and couldn't put it down at all. The writing is beautiful and carries so much meaning... relationships, friendships, family, health, climate change... it's all here. A fantastic achievement of a novel and very VERY highly recommended. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Eric Puchner’s Dream State is a doorstopper which takes its readers from wedding preparations in the late twentieth century through to the mid-twenty-first before coming full circle with the wedding itself. Cece has come to the Montana summer house she’s come to love since being embraced by Charlie’s family while he remains in L A. His old college roommate is to officiate at their wedding, not Cece’s choice, nor Garrett’s but Charlie is his best friend. When Garrett invites her for a hike, Cece accepts despite her antipathy towards this taciturn man so different from her fiancé. Over next few weeks, Cece tries to quash doubts about her future while Garrett attempts to stamp out his feelings for her.. When the novel opens, Charlie, Cece and Garrett are in their late twenties. Charlie forges ahead in his career as an anaesthesiologist but while Cece and Garrett have embarked on adult life, they’re not entirely tethered to it. Puchner charts a path for these three that leads through marriage, parenthood, tragedy and ageing over a half-century which sees the climate crisis worsening, always with the friendship between Charlie and Garrett at its foundation, holding firm despite the challenges thrown at it. Puchner knows how to spin an engrossing story, lightening it now and again with a dash of humour, and his characters are well drawn. Given the Midsummer Night’s Dream epigraph and the novel’s title, I wasn’t entirely sure how he meant it to be interpreted but that didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment.

Dream State is a book about being human, about making decisions that could backfire on you and learning to live with them for your whole life. About how those decisions (and possible mistakes) affect the rest of your life and impact all of those around you, your friends, families and children. I found myself very compelled by this book - especially at the start. It felt almost visceral, I could imagine the lake, the house, the atmosphere Cece and Garrett were wandering around in. This book is so clever, in the way it weaves both the immediate wedding and many, many years to come. The discussions of modern life (even commenting on technology that we don't even have yet!) were so interesting. This book spans years, decades, and almost puts you in a Dream State yourself. A modern classic in the making. Thank you to the publisher for my copy in exchange for an honest review.