Jessica loved her time at Duquette University, until she didn’t. As part of the East House Seven, she was one of the most popular kids on campus. But when her roommate Heather was murdered their senior year, their time as the golden kids abruptly stopped. But now it’s ten years later. Jessica has been working hard to become a successful executive and spent a fortune on a dress, and she is ready to go back to Homecoming and have all eyes on her.
But what she doesn’t expect is Eric. Eric was Heather’s younger brother. He was there the morning after his sister was killed. Now he works in the Alumni Office, and he’s helped to plan Homecoming this year. It would have been Heather’s ten-year Homecoming too, and he has something special planned for the members of the East House Seven who show up. He’s finally, at long last, going to find out which of Heather’s friends killed her.
It didn’t take long for them to find each other when they first came to campus. Jessica, Heather, and Caro were all in the same dorm, along with Courtney, who wasn’t in the group but lived in their dorm and was friends with Heather. The guys—Mint, Frankie, Jack, and Coop—joined the group. It was their work on the Homecoming float their freshman year that cemented their reputation as the East House Seven, and their friendship, but as their time together at college progressed, so did the secrets they were keeping from each other.
While golden boy Mint and Jess dated, and Heather and Jack were a couple, there were other love affairs that happened between the friends that were kept quiet. There were other secrets too—drugs, family issues, money issues, and secret ambitions—that the friends kept from each other. But at Homecoming, as Eric pushes them to see who will confess, the secrets come out, one by one. Jess starts to question whether she knew any of her friends at all.
And more worrying, there is a dark space for her where her memories of that night should be. All she knows is that she woke up alone, in the art studio, with her hands and thighs cut and her arms covered in blood. What did she do that night? Is it possible that she was the one who killed Heather? Will she ever let those dark memories come back to her?
Moving through time, telling the story of what’s happening now, at the ten year Homecoming weekend intertwined with stories of the friends when they were back in school together, In My Dreams I Hold a Knife is a tightly woven thriller that slowly unwinds towards the answers. Author Ashley Winstead has crafted a masterful novel where each character has an agenda and a secret, and they all overlapped in a way that ended in a murder. The way the characters and the plot are woven together, layers upon layers of revelations and lies and desperation and shame.
I thought I would like this book, but I actually really loved it instead. It’s clever in its construction and powerful in its secret-telling. There are themes of friendship and competition, class struggles, parental expectations, addiction, emotional and sexual trauma, and narcissism. In My Dreams I Hold a Knife makes you think about all the things you learned growing up—about what’s important, about what makes you an adult, about love and happiness and success—while it tells one amazing story. I definitely recommend this one!
Egalleys for In My Dreams I Hold a Knife were provided by Sourcebooks Landmark, but I enjoyed it so much I bought my own copy.
