Wow, I don't quite know what to say. I'm not sure what I think of this one, actually. Surreal, scary, unreal; it's like looking at a Rene Magritte painting. This book just wreaks havoc with my head. It features an unreliable narrator, and that's what took me for a spin. It was well-written, but there were problems with the plot that could have been solved by a few easy steps. I liked it, but I'm not sure if I loved it. 
 The concept is interesting and original, the execution is somewhat flawed. It does a good job as a thriller; there were quite a few chilling moments and the terror felt by the characters were well-portrayed. The ending turned out to be a double twist, more conventional than I expected, and then...what I more or less expected. Does this sound vague? Confusing? So is the book. As I said, I'm not quite sure what to think, but I'll try to adequately sum it up. 
 The plot: Parker is an average high schooler, he's got a geeky best friend, a crush on said-geeky-best-friend's newly maturing little sister, and he leans towards the popular side of the high school food chain due to his soccer-team status. All's good, but he's got a problem: he doesn't sleep and he hasn't slept for four years. Parker sleeps, but he doesn't go into deep REM sleep like the rest of us do when we get more than a couple hours, instead, when he closes his eyes, he dreams through the eyes of the last person with whom he made eye contact. It's been that way for a long time, and as anyone knows, a lack of sleep can literally kill you. They use that as torture in some countries. 
 Then Parker crashes into Mia. Literally. Then he sleeps, and dreams of her, and then he sleeps. Unlike in other people's dreams, Parker is able to fall asleep in Mia's dreams; he just finds a nice, cozy little place in her dream setting and dozes off, and Parker is soon getting more rest than he has in a long time. Mia becomes a student at his school, and he goes out of his way to make eye contact with her at the end of every day. He is completely obsessed, completely nuts, he does everything he can to meet her, and he effectively becomes a stalker. Parker is first just a creepy kid who likes Mia, then he becomes the stalker who scares the hell out of Mia, so much that she becomes a shadow of herself. She jumps at the slightest movement, she becomes truly frightened of him, and scared for her life. His school life suffers too, as he becomes ostracized by his classmates because thankfully, everyone notices that he is a huge creep. Meanwhile, in real life, Mia is getting threatening messages from someone pretending to be Parker. In his dreams, Parker is increasingly becoming more violent. He has a darkness inside him. Is it Parker who's committing all these atrocities, is it his doppelganger? Or is it someone intent on framing him through his dreams? 
 The narrator: Parker starts off as a troubled young man with whom we sympathize. Gradually, and the author does this so well, he becomes so ingrained with psychosis due to his lack of sleep and his obsession with Mia that he becomes an unreliable narrator. The frightening things he sees and does in dreams become vague. We're not sure if he is committing these acts or not. The author is female, but she writes a very convincing male voice; this is a first person narrative, and I never questioned the narrator's gender because of certain minor details that he notices. I gradually came to question his reliability as a narrator, due to his atrocious acts, and they are indeed abhorrent and obsessive. 
 "I'd been doing things I'd never have done before Mia. I was out of control. All week, I couldn't seem to think of anything but seeing her again. I couldn't focus in my classes. I'd memorized her schedule, but needed to keep the crumpled paper in my pocket to feel secure. Nothing mattered if I couldn't find a way to see her. 
 Was this what addiction felt like?" 
 He scares the hell out of Mia. She starts off being a friendly, athletic, confident girl. Over time, he turns her into a girl who jumps at every turn, who is scared of walking to her car at night, who carries around pepper spray. 
 "I looked at Mia, at what my actions had caused. She was broken and it was my fault." 
 On the one hand, he needs sleep. Parker is truly afraid he will die, and his instincts for survival kicks in. He is torn between scaring Mia, stalking her for that little bit of eye contact, but his survival instincts are battling to override his conscience. He even justifies it to himself. 
 "No matter how much I hated myself for it, my life was still more important than her fear. She would live through being afraid sometimes." 
 Parker's characterization and decline is well written and documented. I alternately pitied and hated him, doubted him and sympathized with him. 
 The other characters were equally well-written. Mia's descent was believable, and as a fellow female, I truly felt bad for her. Finn and Addie were good characters and good friends, and I liked that there were no unnecessary love triangles. This book is a YA thriller/suspense first and foremost. 
 The structure of the dreams were too smooth to be believable. We've all dreamed before; it's rarely a complete plot. We dream in surreal bits and chunks, moments of this, glimpses of that. It's not entirely untrue to call a dream surreal because it's in bits and pieces that never completely add up to an entire picture that makes sense. Parker's dreams and glimpses into other people's dreams are too plot-filled and unbroken to be realistically deemed dreams. They're more like short skits than anything. 
 There were some plot holes I felt were easily solved that were left undone for no purpose than to fulfill the plot as the author wanted it to. In the beginning, Parker's mother and doctor accused him of being addicted to drugs, it could have been so much easier to just get a fricking drug test instead of merely protesting his innocence. Similarly, Finn's friends finally believed him when he could have easily proved his honesty from the very beginning. These plot holes didn't subtract from the story overall, but they were a few weak points in an otherwise solid story.