Story for the Week
My weirdest dreams come in the minutes between asleep and awake.
I don’t typically remember my dreams. I’ll remember that I dreamt during the night but not even vaguely what the dreams were about. However, on the mornings that I wake early and go back to sleep (usually to go to the bathroom or let the dog out or when Corinne leaves for school)…those are some weird dreams.
Inevitably, weird dreams turn into me texting Corinne to tell her to remind me to tell her about them.
Most recently, I had a dream about missing class. Now I am well beyond the age of having to go to class, and I suspect this particular dream stemmed from Corinne being late for class in the beginning of the school year. For some reason, my class was in downtown Chicago. I sat in one building and realized I was late and didn’t know where my classroom was. One of Corinne’s high school friends, who would never have suggested skipping class, told me I should just skip class. I informed her that I couldn’t miss class because I had already skipped the first two…something I also would never have done.
Since my class was in a different building, I had to cross one of the bridges downtown to get there. When I finally arrived in class, the teacher stood on a stage, and the seats were actually benches angled out from the stage like spokes. The teacher started handing out what looked like menu booklets, but she didn’t have one for me. Instead, she walked me over to a machine where I had to make my own.
The benches were red, and the menu booklets were red, so there was definitely a theme. And as I said, Corinne had been late (or almost late) for class a couple of times at the beginning of the school year. Besides that, I have no explanation. 🤷♀️
A couple years after Corinne started puberty, I dreamt that she raised her arm and had so much underarm hair that it looked like a gorilla. I had another dream once that she had friends over for a party, and they were eating bowls of cornmeal. And several years after Dennis passed, I dreamt that he was back after having been sick for a long time. I spent a whole day working and was pleasantly surprised that he hadn’t bothered me at all that day. I walked into a gigantic bedroom and discovered that he had covered the entire floor with gravel and water and was letting goldfish swim free in the bedroom. Then the dog woke me up.
Most of my dreams result in me just waking up and thinking, “what the heck was that?” One landed me in the ER at 7 a.m. though…and I’m still convinced it’s because Dennis kicked me out of bed. It was a few months after he passed, and I had started listing things for sale online. One of the things I listed was his old stereo system with all the different components—turntable, cassette deck, multi-CD player, equalizer, and two massive stand-up speakers. We hadn’t used it in at least a year before he passed and rarely used it anyway except to connect the stereo sound to the television. I had suggested selling it, and his response was, “Do you know how much money I spent on that?!”
I listed it on Facebook Marketplace for $250. Shortly after, I had a dream that I was trying to catch a flight. I was running to gate 9, and I’m clumsy, so I tripped and fell in the dream. In real life, I woke up with a bloody nose because I had hit my face on the nightstand as I fell out of bed. When I told the ER doctor, she asked me if I caught my flight. I assured her that I had not. 🤣 To this day, I don’t know the relevance of the gate number, but it was abundantly clear that Dennis was not happy that I sold his stereo.
These sorts of dreams have been a thing since I was a kid…to the point where I used to talk and walk in my sleep. My sister used to tell me that she would have entire conversations with me in my sleep. But the one that stands out the most is one where I walked into my parents’ bedroom. My mother told me that I flapped my arms like a chicken and kept saying “buja buja buja.” They kept asking me what I was saying. Eventually I yelled, “there’s ants in my bed.” I then turned around and went back to bed where my parents found me sound asleep.
About a year ago, Corinne told me that life has a way of coming full circle because she dreamt there were ants in her bed. She also has a tendency to fall asleep on the couch and speaks complete nonsense when I wake her up. Recently, I woke her up and she talked some nonsense about turning in her slides about 9/11…which wasn’t a thing at all.
In the book reviewed below, the main female character talks in her sleep, and may reveal things she doesn’t want people to know. Thank goodness Corinne and I don’t talk about things that need to be kept secret in the real world. 😉
Book Review
⭐⭐
2 Stars for The Ferryman’s Daughter by Yasmin Angoe
407 pages
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Publication Date: October 1, 2026
I received an advance copy of this title from Thomas & Mercer via NetGalley.
Publisher’s Description
Forensic science teacher Sanaa Karrem buried her past as deep as she could. When her serial killer father, known as “the Ferryman,” disappeared eighteen years ago, she tried to disappear with him. She changed her name, built a new life. And for a while, it all felt like a distant nightmare.
But when bodies turn up with pennies on their eyes, Sanaa recognizes her father’s signature. The nightmare becomes real again. Soon, Sanaa starts receiving threatening messages and increasingly disturbing “gifts.” The killer is toying with her, and she can’t tell anyone—not even her own fiancé, Detective Marcus Morelli, lead investigator on the case.
As the body count rises, Sanaa leans on her expertise as a former medical examiner to close in on the killer. What she finds is a horrific manifestation of her father’s legacy, hitting shockingly close to home. But what disturbs her most is how much that legacy still lingers within her….
************
Main Characters:
- Sanaa Karrem – 32 years old, head of the science department at the high school where she teaches forensic science, engaged to Marcus, started using her mother’s maiden name after her serial killer father disappeared 18 years ago, relies heavily on her aunt and uncle who took her in after her father disappeared
- Marcus Morelli – 36 years old, a detective with the Wakeland Police Department, engaged to Sanaa
- Nancy Driscoll – a last-minute replacement chemistry teacher at Sanaa’s school, true-crime aficionado, wants to start a true-crime club at school
- Peter Leung – 35 years old, a detective and Marcus’s partner at the Wakeland Police Department
- Dr. Lily Vale – Sanaa’s best friend since meeting in high school, works as the Medical Examiner for Wake County
- Declan Smith – 50s, a professor at Old Dominion in Virginia, writes and teaches about old serial killer cases and has an interest in The Ferryman killings
This story started with so much potential. Dr. Julian Voss was a well-known scientist, author, and lecturer about existential psychology and trauma recovery. Separated from Sanaa’s mother five years before, he and Sanaa live in North Carolina, but she travels with him occasionally on the lecture circuit. At almost 14, Sanaa idolizes her charismatic father and the way he commands a room. But when he disappears and is presumed dead, Sanaa moves in with her aunt and uncle and takes her mother’s maiden name to avoid her father’s fans.
In the present day, Marcus receives an early morning call for a case. A woman’s body posed near a lake with pennies on her eyes prompts an older detective to mention The Ferryman. During a briefing at the police station, the same detective mentions The Ferryman, a serial killer nicknamed for the boatman from Greek mythology who required a coin to carry souls across the River Styx into the underworld.
When Sanaa sees the news and hears about the way the first body was posed, she also thinks of The Ferryman. As bodies start to pile up and similarities are revealed, the police and the public worry that The Ferryman has returned. But Sanaa knows better because The Ferryman was her father…who she killed when she was 14 (not a spoiler since it’s revealed about 5% of the way into the book).
The author does a good job of offering up a lot of suspects. Sanaa starts to receive text messages and notes revealing that someone knows her true identity. A couple of characters are completely obsessed with The Ferryman’s past. Sanaa thinks about the possibility that she has a monster of her own inside of her. So lots of possibilities.
That said, there are a lot of things that made this not a great read for me overall. Let’s start with the killer, who I figured out about halfway through the book. That alone didn’t bother me as much as never really finding out the motive or the rationale of why now, 18 years after the previous killings stopped. And I feel like a reason is important…at least in this case. If you read it, you’ll get it.
Sanaa has lived using her mother’s maiden name since her teenage years. She expresses concern that people are going to find out who her father was and then somehow discover that he was The Ferryman. Now, I understand that she has been living under her mother’s name for half of her life, but “Sanaa” is not exactly a common name. She works as a teacher, so I’m assuming there was some sort of background check, which would have uncovered her given name. And her fiancé is a detective! You’re telling me that no one close to her has figured out her true identity?
To add to that, she continues to keep her identity hidden while people are actively being murdered. The fact that she felt traumatized by her past and let other people be murdered just to keep her secret was not something I could get behind. Once things started to come out, she continued to try to keep her secret…knowing that it would come out sooner rather than later.
There is one scene where Sanaa and Marcus attend a dinner at the home of one of the other detectives. Conversation obviously turns toward the case, and at one point, Sanaa sees Declan Smith on the television. “‘Declan,’ Sanaa gasped, wide eyed and way too concerned than she should have been for a man she didn’t know. She remembered herself too late. Marcus had heard her and was looking at her differently, full of questions she didn’t dare answer.”
That’s the end of the chapter, and the next chapter starts four days later! She and Marcus never discuss it. It’s never brought up again. You’re telling me that she clearly responded to someone she denied knowing and there wasn’t a conversation in the car on the way home or sometime within the next four days? Granted, books don’t narrate every minute of every day, but it was never mentioned again. Marcus never questioned the fact that Sanaa said she didn’t know who Declan was.
When the story reaches the climax, both Marcus and Sanaa follow a lead alone, notifying no one. Again, Marcus is a detective. Sanaa is a forensic scientist. These are not stupid people. So why does each of them mentally acknowledge the stupidity of going into a situation alone and do it anyway?
And overall, it took a really long time to get to the end, and Sanaa’s thought processes and actions became repetitive. Then the ending felt rushed and sloppy and completely unrealistic.
I’m definitely in the minority here, but this one just didn’t grab me…and it absolutely didn’t work for me.
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