FUN FACTS: AMERICAN DREAMERS is a YA supernatural thriller that features multiple POVs, albeit its leading POVs are that of Jana and her supernatural adversary. The supernatural entity is based off the Caribbean creature known as the buck.
Similar works: I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me by Jamison Shae; it also a strong female lead trying to make it in a space notoriously prejudiced to people of color. Bong Joon-Ho’s film Parasite (2019); it also features a close-knit tackling elitism and classism.
AMERICAN DREAMERS
Sixteen-year-old Jana Maraj has always dreamed of making it big on Broadway and being one of the greats. That’s why she’s trained with the best vocal coaches ever since her family moved from the island of Trinidad to the affluent suburb of Sallysburg, Virginia—a place ripe with opportunity. Perditia Wright, her biggest competitor who throws insults her way with racist undertones? No way in hell can she, or anyone for that matter, stop her from achieving her dream.
That is until someone burns down Jana’s family’s sole source of income, and her little brother’s heart condition resurfaces. Unable to do anything in a place that’s not too kind to those in a particular tax bracket, Jana starts to resign herself to failure—until her father secretly brings home a black cat with glowing red eyes, a cat that’s actually a creature of Caribbean folklore rumored to provide riches in exchange for offerings.
Telling herself her father did what he had to do to help his family, Jana does her best to ignore the creature’s presence, pretending to be unaware of its existence. But when a once in a lifetime opportunity presents itself in her elitist—and very prejudiced—school’s music program, Jana finds herself becoming more and more tempted by the creature’s promises, eventually offering to sing to the creature every day to ensure nothing will get in the way of her dream. The thing is, what at first appears to be a blessing in disguise is, in fact, a curse. And soon, Jana finds not just herself but her entire family in a deadly fight against an ancient being hellbent on taking something even bigger than their dreams—their souls.
Only one thing remains certain at the end of the day. To survive, they must kill the creature. But how does one kill something rumored to never die?
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“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
–Anaïs Nin