BAD CREE follows MacKenzie, a young Indigenous woman from the Canadian Prairies living in Vancouver. Nearly a year has passed since her sister Sabrina’s untimely death and MacKenzie has yet to properly grieve. However, when Sabrina begins showing up in Mackenzie’s vivid and deeply upsetting nightmares, MacKenzie is called home by her family to confront the loss head-on.

I read this while battling the flu so did the book’s murky nightmare-infused narrative get enhanced while I was riding high on a cornucopia of decongestants? Maybe. Maybe not. Although, the concept of MacKenzie being able to take things back to reality from her dreams freaked me out, especially where the idea ultimate led to.

It’s kind of hard when you take an award-winning short story (which this was originally) and expand it into a full novel because you run the risk of thinning the plot. That said, while I found it dragged at times for me and started to feel repetitive, once I crossed the final third, I raced to the end.

With BAD CREE, Jessica Johns has written a lucid dream of a novel tackling the deep complexities of loss and grief. The proverbial curtain existing between reality and the dream world is doing little to separate the two realms. As MacKenzie comes and goes between the two, you’ll question which is more likely to hold the truth.