Gateway to Reality by Becca J. Campbell Review

Title: Gateway to Reality

Author: Becca J. Campbell

My Rating: 2/5

Part of a series? No, but the ending did leave the possibility of a sequel. 

Genre(s): Sci-fi, fantasy, smidge of romance. 

Description/Blurb:

Talented artists shouldn’t be waiting tables, scraping by, and living mediocre lives. But that’s exactly what art school graduate Wes Teague is doing.

Then he wakes from a bizarre dream, haunted by the sense that his life isn't real. A harrowing truth presents itself--the real world lies in his dreams, not when he's wide awake.
The dream world he enters each night is rich and vibrant. Chicago appears the same on the surface, but chaos runs rampant as gravity, physics, and other laws of nature become fluid, changing unexpectedly. There, Wes's parents, brother, and sister are strangers. His girlfriend Emily doesn’t recognize him. Wes longs to return, to unlearn the truth about his dual reality.
Wes would sacrifice almost anything to get back to blissful ignorance in a false world.
But now he has feelings for the real Emily.

My review: 

The Gateway to reality is a fairly interesting sci fi/fantasy read, I don't think I've ever read anything completely like it before. We have the true reality which is like a dream world where there is no logic and no rules and then we have a fake version of reality which is like our universe, poor Wes finds himself thrown into life in the 'real world' where his girlfriend and family don't know him and a mysterious man who seems to have answers seems to be watching him.

Although this story wasn't quite my cup of tea it does raise some interesting points about the human condition. Campbell seems to suggest that we need rules and logic to stay sane, and when allowed to do anything they want when they want people need to escape somewhere with a set schedule, where they have to go to work and pay the bills.  The reader also gets to see how people in this world deal with grief and see how events people aren't necessarily aware of may affect the subconscious. However I was a little bit disappointed when the author didn't explore some of these issues further, it felt like the book was a bit too short as it had the potential to really explore the human psyche. 

I like how the author really fleshed out the character of Emily, she could have ended up as the standard love interest who ignores the main character while staring wistfully off into the distance, but she was actually made quite realistic. Emily acted how you'd expect someone to act when a man they barely know comes up to them for the first couple of times, though she did become trusting a bit too quickly for my liking (especially considering her past)but the book was only short so any more time spent with Emily completely rejecting Wes would have made the plot drag a bit.

This is not a book I'd personally want to reread but I think it would be a great read for somebody who enjoys reading about alternate realities, universes completely different to our own or has a lot of appreciation for the creative process (due to the way things get done in the 'real world').