Set in a chillingly plausible near future, this novel imagines a world where nearly every aspect of daily life is filtered through surveillance and algorithmic decision-making. Airports operate more efficiently thanks to SCOUT, an AI border agent that scans faces and moves passengers quickly through security. Homes are equipped with intelligent systems that remind residents of appointments, suggest meals based on fridge contents, and generate shopping lists.
One particularly unsettling innovation is a cerebral implant called Dreamsaver, designed to optimize sleep—and record dreams. The data is incorporated into a broader government initiative focused on “risk management,” a decades-old program intended to prevent violence by assigning every citizen a risk score, much like a FICO score. These scores are calculated from a "holistic" body of 200+ data sources, including the criminal records of long-lost cousins. Much like Minority Report, this system flags individuals as potential perpetrators of "future crimes" based on subconscious patterns— including troubling dreams.
Sara, a historian with a PhD, works as an archivist at the Getty, handling rare analog collections. She’s also a new mother of surprise twins, navigating intense exhaustion and the widening gap in her marriage. Her husband already uses a Dreamsaver implant to stay well-rested with only a few hours of sleep. Reluctantly, Sara decides to get one too.
Soon after, her dreams—disturbing but private to her—are flagged, and her risk score spikes. Without committing a crime or even understanding what she’s done wrong, Sara is detained at a remote facility in the Southern California high desert. Though it's technically not called a prison, detainees—euphemistically called “retainees”—are held indefinitely “for their own safety.” The name and setting evoke chilling historical echoes of Manzanar.
The logic is Kafkaesque: stress causes nightmares, which worsens her score, which causes more stress. The male attendants enforce arbitrary rules—like citing her for an "unauthorized hairstyle"—which extends the length of her "retention." Meanwhile, retainees are "free" to work on Mechanical Turk-style digital labor classifying video clips for media companies to identify AI-generated content.
In an insidious twist, it turns out that the makers of Dreamsaver have embedded a marketing experiment in the facility, using a researcher posing as a retainee to test dream-based product placement. The experiment was not entirely successful. -- instead of the brand name product, Sarah has been seeing the general type of item in her dreams. Sara, who has been keeping a dream journal, begins noticing recurring objects in her dreams—generic items instead of specific brands—signaling the experiment's flawed execution.
At about the midpoint of the book, we see Julie (aka Einsley) outside the facility following her 3 week stint in Madison. We see her at the office reviewing data and later home hosting a dinner party with friends where they ask her questions about her time at Madison.
This helps us to understand the broader context of the facility's operations, including the unethical corporate experiments tied to Dreamsaver and the power dynamics between the for-profit corporations (the detention facility, the communications company that provides email, the official online store which is the only place family can make purchases for retainees, and the government). According to the Dreamsaver folks - everyone who has the device agreed to all these experiments and data use which ties back to whether people can really agree to 15 page terms of use in repetitive and obscure legalese.
Einsley/Julie reaches out to Sara via e-mail to see how she is doing following the wildfire on the area and to offer support via contributions to her commissary account. She accidentally signs one email as "Julie" -- which sets off a chain of events. Sara realizes what we, the readers, have already figured out and this catalyzes her to lead a collective resistance by refusing to provide their labor. If no one cooks, cleans, or works on the digital media contract piecework, the facility can’t function.
After nearly a year of being "retained" for her "safety" -- Sara’s expedited release comes not through legal recourse or proof of innocence, but because she refuses to work despite the institution increasing punitive measures by reducing her privileges (email, commissary, shower and library) and began to withhold food from her at mealtimes.
Lalami’s novel is deeply timely. It probes pressing questions about AI, surveillance, predictive analytics, and justice. It also draws urgent parallels to real-world issues like the use of prison labor by tech companies and the shocking number of incarcerated individuals harmed by faulty data, flawed legal processes, and systemic bias.
Some reviewers critique the book’s pacing. I’d argue the slow buildup is intentional: we’re meant to inhabit Sara’s disorientation and anxious introspection. The first half mirrors her foggy mental state—hopeful but uncertain, overthinking every move.
I was intrigued by the author's details about the former elementary school now serving as the "retention facility" -- Perris, CA is in fact about 90 minutes drive from Victorville (where they take refuge during a wildfire). It's nearly equidistant from LA (71 mi) and San Diego (81 mi) which would make it a good location to take "retainees." There's also a Spanish revival style museum that was formerly Sherman Indian High School that is steeped in its own history of forced institutionalization.
Finally, the author does reference a number of other books which influenced her -- such as "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff. While some of the concepts may land a bit heavily at times, they ground the story in a recognizably imminent future and presents a relatable scenario for a future we may all soon inhabit.
REVIEW: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
RATING: 5-stars
© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.
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