This book was about a young woman in her first job and her various adventures during the first year she was employed at “Dallergut Dream Department Store”. 

Despite this being the main theme of the book, I don't believe anyone having worked any sort of corporate job would find this book relatable: Everything about the industry -from the department store itself to the dream making industry- seems to be made from a child’s understanding of how they work. The CEO of the company -a very important and recognized company, the book tells us!- conducts every interview himself and works at the front desk. The company itself is entirely included in one building, and doesn’t appear to have any offshots. There are less than 10 managers for the entire company.

I cannot tell if the “Penny world” is so unrealistic on purpose, both to remind us of a dream and as a contrast to the small snippets of the “real world” that we see (as those do tend to be rather glum, even as they are the only places where the book feel truly realistic). But if that is the case, then I don’t think the “Penny world” is dreamlike ENOUGH. By which I mean weird and lacking in internal logic. If it is supposed to mimic dreams then it mimics, again, a child’s conception of them.

Also, WHAT exactly the “Penny world” is is unclear to me. I don’t think all of this is happening inside of a different dream world, as the beginning tells us that this is all happening in a regular town. Except an amnesiac, corporeal version of people that are currently asleep will show up every day? (LITERAL day! Penny works during the day, and they seem to be getting quite a lot of people during that time. Maybe Penny isn’t supposed to be Korean. After all, every client we know by name is Korean, time zones could be coming into play.)

This would not normally bother me, because a lack of logical sense in a book about DREAMS, famously nonsensical experiences, should be a feature rather than a bug. Except they do try to give it logic! It is, in fact, the very first thing that this book does!!!

Is this just supposed to happen in a fantasy world? Where, again, no one awake seems concerned by the fact that they are sleepwalking somewhere every night?

I liked that this book didn’t shy away from Penny’s flaws. I think this was the only interesting thing about our otherwise perfectly “average-woman in her first job” protagonist. Then again, they were very average flaws. 

The other characters of the cast were weirder, but I unfortunately didn’t find *them* more interesting. Like many things in this book, they felt like crayon drawings of people rather than, well, actual people.

The dreams this book talks about are certainly interesting, but they are carefully constructed creations meant to help or please people. They hold little relation to real life dreams, which are chaotical remixes by our brains of what we experienced during the day. I think dreams, real dreams, are very interesting! I think trying to make a story structure with the structure of a dream in mind ALSO sounds very interesting! I am disappointed, because this book really wasn’t about dreams in the end, and I would have really liked for it to be.

There was nothing horribly offensive about this book, I had some satisfaction reading it. It's just that I don’t think it was particularly good, or particularly interesting.