An Oprah's Book Club Pick and an instant New York Times bestsellerA Book of the Year for
The Times and
Guardian in 2025
'[A] brilliantly panoramic tale of family ties'
Guardian'Moving, funny and utterly engrossing'
The Times'A totally involving and moving literary page-turner'
Clare Chambers'I loved it. I read it so so fast and I think if you like, for example, Jonathan Franzen or books where people love, love, love a place so much, you too may find yourself longing to jump in a lake'
Ella RisbridgerCece is in love. She has arrived early at her in-laws' beautiful lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a cardiac anaesthesiologist with a brilliant future.
When Charlie asks Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, Cece can't imagine anyone less appropriate for the task. After all, Garrett, a depressed baggage handler at the local airport, doesn't believe in marriage. But as she spends time with him and his gruff mask slips, she grows increasingly uncertain about her future, leading to an impulsive decision that will alter the three friends' lives forever - the events of that summer reverberating across fifty years and spanning generations.
Industry Reviews
A family history that feels monumental . . . The book's effect is hypnotically telescopic, a vision of people we come to know across decades . . . We book reviewers don't get to say much about endings, but Puchner's final chapter is
one of the most touching and satisfying I've read in years. I see you teetering there between choosing to read
Dream State or not.
Jump in - Washington Post
I like it when a novel surprises me. So often, it's easy to slot literary narratives into a short list of categories: will-they-won't-they romance, journey to self-knowledge, sad girl millennial lit. By page 50, I can generally tell my thinly disguised autobiographies from my cosy crimes. But
Dream State went somewhere I wasn't expecting . . . On the sentence level,
Puchner's writing is almost flawless - I can't think of another book I have annotated so heavily, underlining phrases on almost every page...
moving, funny and utterly engrossing. - The Times