The Dream Hotel

A Novel

By: Laila Lalami

Narrated by: Frankie Corzo, 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.

©2025 Laila Lalami (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

A TODAY Read with Jenna Book Club Pick

Longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction

A Best Book of the Year So Far from The Economist

One of the New York Post’s 30 Must-Read New Thrillers

A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 from Goodreads, People, TIME Magazine, TODAY, The Washington Post, New York Times Book Review Podcast, Esquire, Men's Health, Marie Claire, The National, New Scientist, Literary Hub, Business Recorder, Deseret News, Kirkus, Screen Rant, The OC Register, Electric Literature, ALTA, The A.V. Club, Language Arts, and The Crimson White

"Brilliant...Makes you question why we aren’t doing more to protect our privacy right now."—Ann Patchett in TheSkimm

“A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future where data collection penetrates interior life, The Dream Hotel is also an elegant meditation on identity and what we sacrifice, unthinkingly, for the sake of convenience.”—Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Candy House

“Powerful, richly conceived…The book’s corporatized reality is slightly more twisted than ours but entirely plausible…Lalami plays out the shiftiness and uncertainty of reality when dreams are given more predictive weight than facts to stunning effect…Here, rendering this edge-of-nightmare world, Lalami skates along at the height of her powers as a writer of intelligent, complex characters…As with her other novels, there’s a softhearted universalism to Lalami’s treatment of surveillance capitalism. Hers is one in which humans retain the ability to trust one another enough to forge working solidarities and authentic collaborations. Although it relies on a speculative technology for its plot, The Dream Hotel is astounding, elegantly constructed, character-driven fiction. Lalami’s realistic approach to Sara and others, inflected with leftist politics and history, elides any sharp division we might imagine about where we’ve been and what we face ahead…Within the latter part of the novel, it’s not the stuff of tragedy or alarm about the human condition we encounter, but surprising, unadulterated hope.”—Los Angeles Times

Worth a read

As scary as the premise of being imprisoned for your dreams is, just as scary is the bureaucracy the main character faces--not to mention all the other BS things that keep her in detention.

I found myself appreciating this book on a structural and writing level that started in the background and eventually emerged into my consciousness. The writing/structure mirrors what's happening to Sara, which was both good and bad. It contributed to feeling what Sara was feeling (claustrophobic, every day is the same, and so on) but also made it feel a little repetitious. And it was a fairly long book considering it's not exactly action-packed. Still, I was never bored.

For me, a 3 is a high rating so take this for what it's worth.

Characters that are fragile or brave you decide

This book was so amazing and heartbreaking it makes you think just how fragile life is and the moments that define us and cause us to endure are the moments that define us the most. I couldn’t believe that the characters had to be locked away for as long as they were and no one did anything or questioned that the corporation that caused the people to have to serve time to they say protect others. It was never questioned for fear of retaliation it makes me wonder how we as a society just accept things as they are to not have to fight for what maybe not be a good thing. Good thing these characters knew how to be brave.

Excellent Dystopian Novel - highly relevant given current events

The book was well structured. We share so much data with the companies and the government, it is not too much of a stretch to envision people being imprisoned for their thoughts and dreams. How much of our privacy are we willing to give up? And what happens to vulnerable people when the wrong folks get their hands on that data? The book is also a commentary on the immigrant experience and life in prison. There is a lot to dig in to!

Although this book has a sci fi, it does not get into any of the science - a little bit more about the tech would have been interesting.

I highly recommend this book - for a book with so many layers, it flowed very well and was a quick read.

A must read about our new totalitarian present. Must read and terrifying

How close we are to a technological brave be world and how we must. Resist!!!!

The next parable of the sower

This book was amazing! I can see it being the next parable of the sower or 1984. It really makes you think about the data you share, even unintentionally.

Terrific and Disturbing Story with Characters that you care about

The characters were so very real and their situation all too possible in the very near future.

Move along..nothing new to see here

This felt like a weak attempt at a sci-fi novel with its premise once you get into it. I assumed from all of the hype it would be something new, but it honestly isn't. While the performance/narrator was perfectly fine, the story line was difficult to digest. So much was just "bullying" that we all know in this day and age would not be allowed in a facility holding highly educated women, whether you signed a non-discloure or not. "Word would get out" and the non-disclosure would be a wash once the word got out and it has been open and running a minimum of a year so I doubt women wouldn't talk and the media get hold of it or it be released online, something. The main character was honestly not likeable due to her putting herself in situations she could have avoided had she just followed the rules then accusing her captors of racism when she is punished even though others in the facility close to her are punished similarly for their transgressions. The plot "twist" everyone spoke of in the leading up to my excitement for reading this book was nothing more than an ending to the story. No twist. People commenting that they had a difficult time putting this book down was also a stretch and most of those reviews received the free advanced copy. I found myself wanting to be done with it, so it took me about 4 days to finish it, but I had to force myself to finish it. I think this book got picked up by so many because they were given free advanced copies and it was on Good Morning America as Jenna's book club choice. In realizing this after I read it, I think the high reviews for it --which are currently at a paltry 3.9 stars--are a bit skewed. If you need a quick read for a 3 or 4 hour plane ride or something to listen to in the car,it would be easy to follow along. If you are excited like I was for the "plot twist", don't be.

Dreams, Data & Dystopia—A Thought-Provoking Listen

The Dream Hotel is a haunting, high-concept story that explores the terrifying idea of your dreams being monitored, manipulated, and used against you. Laila Lalami takes our daily reality—clicking “agree” without reading the fine print—and spins it into a sharp, timely critique of surveillance, consent, and control.

The narration by Frankie Corzo and Barton Caplan is excellent. Both bring clarity, tone, and tension to a layered story that shifts between consciousness and dreamscape with ease. Their performances added depth to the experience and kept me engaged throughout.

While I found the premise fascinating and disturbingly relevant, I felt somewhat emotionally detached from the characters—possibly by design, as the story mirrors the feeling of being inside a dream. That detachment was the only thing that kept it from being a full five stars for me.

If you enjoy speculative fiction that makes you think—and you’re drawn to stories that question how much privacy we truly have—this is well worth the listen.

Mixed Feelings

Very well-written, this is an interesting book with a timely premise. Perhaps it's the timing of when I listened to it, but I DNF at about 40%. It was moving a bit too slowly for me--which is probably appropriate for the protagonist's situation. What's going on in the country and the world affected my ability to stay with this one.

I'm usually not much into dystopian books but this one might not be so dystopian given current events. I'll likely pick it up again in the future (if it's not banned in the meantime).

A waste of time

This was a interesting story that could of been interesting if told without so many detail about unneeded topics. The audible reading of it was almost unlistenable with all the noises it made to say the report had been blacked out. I found this book to be quite boring and poorly told on audible.