Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett


Series: Arkwell Academy (bk. 1)

Genera: Paranormal Romance

Subjects: Nightmares, supernatural, dreams, magic, murder boarding schools, magical creatures

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 367 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $17.99

Publisher: TorTeen

Summary/ product description: “Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare.
Literally.
Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder.
Then Eli’s dream comes true.
Now Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.”

My Rating: êêêê

My Review: Even with the cliché boarding school for magical being, this book managed to be a unique, fun story. Other than in the Soul Screamers series, there really no other YA books about Nightmares. The main character is the Nightmare/mara in this book, even if she’s half normal human. Dusty is nothing like Sabine from Soul Screamer. Dusty is stubborn, and good. Her mother’s the real Nightmare. Her mother left her and her dad when she was a baby, and didn’t really show up until Dusty got her abilities. Her mother likes to bend rules, and she doesn’t have much of a relationship with Dusty.

A the beginning of the book Dusty already knows what she is and has be attending Arkwell for about a year. She’s dream-feeding on Eli and finds out that she and him together can see the future in dreams when together. I really like Eli. He seems like a great guy. His dream is to be an FBI agent. It’s not his fault he got thrown into this. Lucas, the other guy that Dusty dates, I don’t like so much. He seemed like a fake to me. I’m happy to admit that I was right, but not in a spoilery kind of way. Selene was an awesome friend to Dusty. And she’s a siren who doesn’t want sirens to be seen as sex objects. Yeah, she’s awesome.

A big part of this book was a murder mystery that Dusty was trying to solve by dream seeing. It was awesome and different. I’ve read so many murder mysteries and most characters just go for the snoop and stalk method, looking for clues and such. Dream detective? Awesome! And I never guessed who it was! There’s this whole mythology aspect of this book that has to do with the Arthurian legends. Wizards and such.

I recommend this book if you like the Hex Hall series, the Mythos Academy series, other boarding schools series, and books about dreaming like the Wake series.


Cover Art Review: Very vector based. I like the hand rendering on the title. It’s very customized. This book’s cover makes it look fun, which it kind of is. There’s a silhouette of the girl and a Phoenix in a grave yard.

 

~Haley G

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