Review: The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett

Pages: 367
Expected Publication: March 5th 2013 by Tor Teen
# in Series: #1 in The Arkwell Academy series
Source: Macmillan-Tor/Forge(Publisher) via Netgalley

Amazon | The Book Depository | Chapters/Indigo

Summary from Goodreads:

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 Thoughts & Review:

I was so excited to read The Nightmare Affair, I love paranormal reads and the main character, Dusty, being a “Nightmare” sounded awesome. The entire concept seemed so unique to anything I’ve read and needless to say it did not disappoint.

Dusty was a great protagonist. I loved her suspicious nature, even though it got her into trouble quite a few times. I also loved how Eli came into play, at first I thought they were going to despise him but I grew to love him throughout the book. I loved how he was always trying to look out for Dusty, despite the fact that he had zero magical powers. A lot of the characters though were just “fillers” for me… I wasn’t attached to many of them so that was made me rate the book down one star. I really only loved the two main characters, so the supporting characters fell a bit flat for me.

One of the main things that drew me to the story initially was the fact that it was a paranormal boarding school. Boarding school books are up there in my Top Ten settings for all Young Adult books and the fact that it was a school entirely for paranormals and MagicKind just topped it off. There were so many different “MagicKinds” in The Nightmare Affair. Initially I thought it would feature a lot of the usual, and while it did, there were also some interesting ones. Obviously the Nightmares were my favorite. The entire concept of them, the way they could warp dreams and then to throw in the dream seer concept as well just enthralled me.

For a debut novel, I was pleasantly surprised. Mindee Arnett’s writing style is fabulous. I was instantly sucked in from page one, and she really did a great job of keeping the reader interested. I also really enjoyed the mystery, which is essentially the main part of the story. Honestly, I had my suspicions with everyone throughout the novel so much so that when the time came I was actually surprised, because I really didn’t know who it would be. Arnett really does a great job of wrapping up the mystery as well. The closer I got to the end, the more nervous I became: I thought she would leave us hanging until book two, but it’s really wrapped up well and doesn’t leave you crying for more at the end.

I will absolutely be continuing this series and I cannot wait to see what is next in story for Dusty and the Arkwell Academy series! If you love paranormal stories I highly recommend it!

My Rating:

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