In My Dreams I Hold A Knife

From the first pages of the novel, Jessica Miller, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, shows herself to be self-obsessed, vain, and ambitious. Her psychic wounds, formed in childhood from her father’s unrealistic expectations and OxyContin addiction, cause her to see herself only through other people’s eyes and in comparison with the good and bad qualities of others. In college, though, she found a close-knit group of friends. Secretly, she’s jealous of them, especially Heather Shelby, the group’s informal leader, who is murdered their senior year. Unable to remember the night Heather died, Jessica believes she may have been involved in the death. She buries this fear with a series of accomplishments, like obtaining the perfect job and perfect body.

When she arrives at her 10-year reunion, she gets what she wants: all eyes are on her. But the more she understands about the night Heather died—and her part in the death—she realizes that her ambitions are shallow and meaningless if she isn’t happy. She has always feared mediocrity, but by the end of the novel, she understands that being petty, shallow, and jealous is far worse than being average.