Dreaming Of You/Sonando Contigo by Lynda Sandoval

Dreaming Of You/Sonando Contigo by Lynda Sandoval

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As I said at the start of my review for the previous book by Sandoval I had read – this is both the first and second time I’ve read this book. While this is the first time that I have read ‘Dreaming of You’ by Lynda Sandoval, I had previously read ‘Under Her Skin’ by Lea Santos June 2 2016. ‘Under Her Skin’ was released 10 years after ‘Dreaming of You’ and is a ‘regendering’ of ‘Dreaming of You’. As in, one of the main characters in Dreaming of You, Enrique Pacias the male gardener from Mexico became Torien Pacias, the female gardener from Mexico, in ‘Under Your Skin’ (and Enrique’s player brother, Iso Pacias, became Torien’s player sister Madeira Pacias; and Lilly’s male agent in this book became a woman in ‘Under the Skin’).

Right, so – story is basically the same as I read in 2016. Just with different sexual organs and sexual orientations involved. The only thing I can really think of to note is that one of the things I really liked about Santos lesbian series (Amigas y Amor) is how lesbians interacted in both the Mexican and Mexican-American communities. Though now that I’ve read this specific book here, I realized that many of the things I had noticed, both the acceptance and the divides were things already there in the heterosexual books. I don’t mean acceptance/divides for lesbians, I mean that the things I had spotted and ‘saw’ as acceptance/divides for lesbians, were already in the heterosexual books in reaction to the heterosexuals around them. I’m not really sure how to take that.

Except. Hmms. Looking over my review, and recalling thoughts I had while reading the book yesterday – there were things I remembered from my prior read that did not seem to be here in this book. In concept, yes. Like I have this vague memory of Lily . . . oh good grief, why would the author have changed the character from Lily Lujan to Iris Lujan? Mmphs. Right, so, I’ve this vague memory of Lily asking her friends about a specific area, the area Torien lived in – about whether they had ever been there – because it is more of a Mexican Mexican area, as opposed to them – several generation (or more) Mexican-Americans (or, as was stated in ‘Dreaming of You’, Mexican vs. American). The friends had reacted with the idea that they hadn’t – because of that divide of Mexicans from Mexico, and Americans of Mexican descent. And that concept was conveyed in the Dreaming of You book, but the conversation didn’t happen. I got distracted by the Lily/Iris issue, and have forgotten what else I was going to say in this paragraph.

My mind, as is a constant issue, is a mess so – I’ll redirect people to my other review. Though I will note that the two books I’ve read under the Sandoval name (the two heterosexual books) work well as either heterosexual or lesbian books.

Rating: I gave this book, or the lesbian version of this book, a rating of ‘4.65 to 4.85’ when I read it in 2016. I give this version here a rating of 4.35 to 4.45 – though, admittedly, that might be because I’d already read this book and some of the annoyances spotted in the prior book grew here meeting them for the second time, and some of the ‘surprises’ that might have bumped the rating, weren’t surprises this time.

February 28 2017




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