Review: The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett

Synopsis: 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.

Publisher: Tor/Forge

Page Count: 367 pages (US hardcover)

Edition: Kindle galley (Kindly provided by NetGalley)

Rating: 4/5 stars

Review:

Dusty Everhart is a sixteen year old Nightmare. No, she isn't bad. She's an actual Nightmare. One night while out feeding, Dusty realizes that she's feeding on her former classmate, Eli Booker. While in his dream, some things happen. She gets taken back to her school by werewolf police after almost being caught by Eli and his father. At the school, Dusty realizes that the dream Eli was having came true. So the rest of the story is her and Eli trying to figure out who the murderer is and why they killed.

This is a very fun, action packed, mystery. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. Dusty was an all right main character. She was funny, smart and witty. But sometimes I felt like her humor was a little too forced. There were some parts in the book where the author was trying to make Dusty overly funny and it didn't work for me. I also thought Dusty was a little too trusting to most people. But I overall did enjoy her character. Dusty was very strong and stubborn. When she knew she was right, she went with her gut. She never let anyone sway her opinion.

As for her side kick, Eli Booker, I thought he was average. We never saw much of him until the second half of the book. In the first half, he hated Dusty. For a good reason, I guess. But I didn't see why we were supposed to be rooting for Eli and Dusty to be together. There was never any real chemistry between them. I hope in the next book we are able to see more of him. I liked Eli and Dusty's friendship too. They were really good friends.

Dusty also has a best friend, Selene, who is a siren. I loved Selene. She was in the whole book and that was a nice change. In most YA books when the main protaganist meets the love interest, they drop their friends and be with the love interest. But I liked that Selene was a main part of the book. She was very funny and I loved how she was a femenist of some sorts. Selene hates that sirens are objectified as sex objects, so she dresses horribly. That was a nice touch to the book. I want to see more of Selene in the next book. Maybe something to do with her past and Lance? :D

The other side characters were good as well. None of them really stand out to me any way. The characters in this book were pretty average to me.

As for the plot in this book, I loved it. The whole Nightmare thing was SO unique and I loved it. I was really confused in the beginning, but I grew used to it after about fifty to eighty pages in. Mindee Arnett kept explaining the Will more than once and I liked that. I still have a few questions that I hope are answered later on in the series. The mystery aspect of this book really made this book good for me. I was guessing the whole time right up until the end. I sort of suspected the side kick to the villian, but I didn't guess who the villian was.

All in all, THE NIGHTMARE AFFAIR by Mindee Arnett is a great start to what I hope is going to be a great series. It's very Hex Hall-esque, so if you've been missing the Hex Hall world, I suggest you pick this book up when it comes out on March 5, 2013. THE NIGHTMARE AFFAIR is different enough from Hex Hall that it won't be repetitive. I gave this book four out of five stars because to me it wasn't enough for a five stars.