Daydreamers

by Alvin Lu

A Fragmented, Genre-Bending Ghost Story of Inheritance, Fiction, and Unfinished Truths

ARC Review

Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Release Date: July 15 2025
Format: ARC Review

Daydreamers is one of those books that makes you stop and ask: what am I actually reading?

It opens with a “Translator’s Preface,” but it’s hard to tell if that’s real or part of the fiction. That unease never really settles. The narrator (the son) is translating his father’s unfinished manuscript that is written from the point of view of the son, but the deeper you go, the more the roles blur — father and son, author and character, fiction and memory.

At the center of it all is Lena Wu, a literary ghost, maybe real, maybe not. She appears in different forms: an obsession, a symbol, a rumor. People argue over her meaning without ever quite knowing who she is. That mystery haunts the book, and you feel it.

There were places where I got lost. Footnotes, commentary, borrowed passages from other authors, some of it messy, some of it hypnotic. It feels like a story stitched together out of scraps. Notes, fragments, interviews, things half remembered. Sometimes it meanders. Sometimes it doubles back on itself. But that disorientation? It feels intentional. This isn’t a clean manuscript a final draft. It’s a son trying to make sense of the pieces left behind.

If you like metafiction, if you’re drawn to books that break themselves open, this one’s for you. If you want clarity and resolution, maybe not.

But there’s something here. Something strange and quiet and hard to shake.

Would I Recommend It?

Yes, for readers who like books that resist being boxed in, that blur fact and fiction, and that leave you with more questions than answers.
Not for those looking for a clean, polished narrative arc.

Thank you to University of Alabama Press and NetGalley for the ARC and the opportunity to read this early.

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