Ellie, Gabby, and Mona are conjoined triplets who love singing hits by their favorite band, The Bee Gees. Their mother left when they were still infants, and their father Benson has always been cagey about the circumstances. When the girls have the chance to perform on a televised singing competition, they jump at the opportunity—not for fun or fame, but for the chance that their estranged mother will see them and finally come home.
A light late-70s period piece, Mark Workman’s FOREVER WE DREAM has an unhurried, uncomplicated, and enjoyable structure. The three protagonists balance some de rigueur tropes (the desire to be surgically separated from one another, to live “normal” lives) with entertaining and enriching characterization (their love for The Bee Gees, their sewing business, their engineering and tinkering know-how—all of which directly affect the plot). Privileged, pretty, and awful, Twyla-Violet Higgins makes for an eminently unlikeable antagonist (with her own moral and emotional arc, to boot). The overall narrative structure is unsurprising—rounds of elimination in the competition, escalating acts of bullying—but the text hits its beats and sells what it needs to sell. There’s just enough narrative complication (from the girls’ underlying motivation to learn more about their mysterious mother) and dry humor (“The girls had been so excited about their upcoming performance that they didn’t even think of vomiting before they went on stage”) to keep the pages turning.
There are some unusual choices in FOREVER WE DREAM, mostly deriving from audience expectations. Much of the characters’ interior lives is explicitly spelled out (“Her resentment toward the sisters deepened”), and this explicitness makes it feel like YA. At the same time, a YA audience would likely miss most of the period-specific descriptions and humor (“Powerful and determined, they felt like Rocky Balboa entering the ring against Apollo Creed;” “Twyla-Violet’s vengeful revelation […] made them feel like Muhammad Ali had punched their liver and André the Giant had flattened them with an elbow drop”), and probably wouldn’t know who The Bee Gees are in the first place. Some of the conflict feels manufactured, as when a private detective spills some beans—totally unprompted—to one of the antagonists. This is especially true as the mystery of the missing mother begins to unravel in the final pages; there’s a level of coincidence and revelation that’s just shy of being too much.
Nonetheless, FOREVER WE DREAM has what it needs to work: interesting, likeable protagonists; predictable but engaging rising action; and a dramatic, emotionally resonant conclusion.
Mark Workman’s FOREVER WE DREAM has some extraneous matter that could be cut, but the core emotional arc is strong and well-executed.
–Dan Accardi for IndieReader