Review:& Giveaway The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett

The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett

Publisher- Tor Teen

Released-March 5th 2013

Purchase- Amazon / B & N / Chapters

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:
It's hard being 16 years old, but it's even harder when you just came into your powers and start to crave the 'fictus' that is needed to replenish magic. So, that's why we begin this story with Destiny (Dusty) Everhart breaking into a house ready to sit on her subjects chest and enter his dreams. See, she's a Nightmare. Literally, and needs to dream-feed to live. Only she wasn't thrilled with the idea when she learned that the subject is no other then Elijah Booker, the really cute popular guy at her old high school. But 'The Will' has an elastic pull and Dusty has no choice but to do what she came for. When she enters Eli's dream, it's much more alive then most of the other ones, in fact she recognizes where she is, which is impossible since Eli is just an Ordinary.

Not only is Eli dreaming of a murder, but that murder comes true and it's at Arkwell Academy. 

Dusty's school, the school for all magical-kind.

The Nightmare Affair is one of those really cool books that has my name written all over it. It has all the fun and wonderful things I like in my escape. Academy setting, magical and paranormal beings, witty well developed characters, a whodunit mystery and a light bubbling romance.

I had a lot of fun with this one. Mindee Arnett manages to spin something completely new and refreshing in a genre where I thought I'd read everything. A Nightmare as a paranormal being? That is such a wicked concept and very well delivered as we learn what it entails. I also loved that this is also a whodunit mystery story. I guessed one of the culprits but the other half surprised me. I also thought it was all kinds of awesome that the legend of Arthur/Merlin and Excalibur was mixed into this. You wouldn't no it, but I'm a big mid-evil fan and thought that particular twist was very well placed and made it even more fascinating.

There are a lot of wonderful sassy characters that made this book really standout.

Dusty has always had to live with the knowledge that her mother isn't a person that is well liked within the magical community and being a Nightmare doesn't exactly give you cool points, but through it all, Dusty raises her head high and tries not to let it get her down. 

Eli wasn't a character I liked right away. He was very cold, distant and bitter in the beginning, but I guess I would be to if I didn't understand what was happening and thrown into world that wasn't technically suppose to exist. As the story moves on I started to like Eli a lot more. The dream-seeing connection between him and Dusty was pretty cool stuff to see and I found myself re-reading each one to see if I can catch any clues.

Selene is one of those really awesome best friends. She's tomboyish despite her Siren beauty, she supportive and funny and stands up for Dusty like a true friend would. She also has a spunky personality that I found contagious. She's one of the few good people in a magical school filled with misfits, mean girls and bullies.

Now, while I enjoyed a lot of what this book had to offer, my only issue was the flow of the story. The writing is well done and the pacing was fine, but the flow of information we got felt overloaded. There are so many different thing happening, it felt like we were learning it all in one breath. This world is very original with lots of wonders to learn about, but it felt overwhelming at times making it hard to just sink into the story.  

With that said, I still had a lot of fun with this book. It tuned out to be quite the entertaining experience. It's fun and creative and filled with colorful imagination. I'm not  sure if this is a standalone but I could see all the possibilities for more, which I think would be great. I'd love to see what happens with Dusty and Eli and their Dream-seer abilities next! 

 A fun read!

Find the author:

Goodreads / Website

                                                                   4 Snowflakes

Want to win our copy of The Nightmare Affair??  Just fill out the form below!  Good Luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway