09/04/2026
FRIDAY FIRST CHAPTER
Young Adult readers, this one’s for you!
🩷 Barbie: Dreamscape
By Alex Aster
My life is a dream.
Rose-colored enchanted birds wake me up every morning with a warm cup of tea. They pull back my sunset-tinged, spun-from-clouds (yes, actual clouds) comforter, help me up from my pillow (also a cloud, sunrise dipped), then carry me by the ribbons on the shoulders of my nightdress to the bathroom to get ready, where a bath is already running, pearlescent bubbles foaming and effervescing.
They do my hair, then an enchanted wardrobe helps me get dressed, then I have a perfect day at school with my perfect friends and we all have fun and then go to bed and do it all over again.
Everything goes exactly as planned.
Things are fair all the time.
Hard work is always rewarded. Isn’t life great that way?
Things are so good, even my dreams are just reflections of my normal days: Getting ever-flowing sundaes at the ice-cream room in the cafeteria; taking a boat down the pink canals of Heartland to see the nightly fireworks, raising my hand in class and always getting the answer right; earning a 100% on a test to add to my You’re the Best! wall.
All things I do all the time.
But the dream I’m having this morning.... it isn’t like my life at all.
It’s kind of... dark?
It takes place on Boxing Day, the most important day of my life, the pinnacle of everything I’ve worked so hard for, the culmination of my time at Swancrest Academy, when I get assigned my future role-and future happiness—by the all-knowing, all-powerful Fates...
It’s a moment I daydream about often. Me, standing in front of all of Heartland, getting a Fate no one’s ever seen before. Maybe even being the first person to get multiple.
But in this dream... the most awful thing is happening.
▪️ Plot Summary
In the pink-hued paradise of Heartland, Barbie’s life is orderly until she graduates from Swancrest Academy and unexpectedly becomes “Fateless,” a historical first. Triggered by a pulsing mysterious necklace, she ventures beyond Heartland through shifting landscapes and secret forests to uncover a hidden truth.