The Nightmare Affair

March 25, 2013
The latest aspirant to Harry Potter's throne is 16-year-old Destiny Everhart, a sophomore at the Arkwell Academy boarding school for magical teens. Dusty is "halfkind," with an ordinary father and a mother who is a legendary Nightmare. Dusty's Nightmare powers manifested late and seemed feeble, until she fed off the dream "fictus" of hottie Eli Booker, and the murder in his nightmare turned out to be real. Now paired with Eli as a dream-seer, Dusty struggles to navigate the perils of high school while searching for cluesâfrom both the waking and dreaming worldsâabout the killer. Arnett's cast includes werewolves, sirens, and wizards, and she draws from numerous literary and mythological sources (including Arthurian legend), to a somewhat cluttered effect. The scrappy first-person narration and integration of frightening dreamscapes make Arnett's debut a fun paranormal mystery, with a focus on atmosphere over romance. But original it is not: for all the tweaks, Dusty, down to her frizzy red hair, is barely a step removed from Hermione Granger. Agent: Suzie Townsend, New Leaf Literary + Media. Ages 13âup.

June 1, 2013

Gr 7 Up-Sixteen-year-old Destiny "Dusty" Everhart is a Nightmare, a magical creature who feeds on the dreams of others. She attends Arkwell Academy, a school for supernatural beings, and is allowed off campus on specific occasions to feed. When she enters the dreams of Eli Booker, she gets quite a shock: he is dreaming about a murder that is taking place at Arkwell. After she leaves his dream, Dusty finds that the events she just witnessed have happened in real life. Using her talents, she must gather clues and follow signs in order to solve the murder and prevent the killer from striking again. Because she and Eli have a bond that she does not understand, she must do this by entering his dreams over and over again. As a new entry in an already crowded field of supernatural stories set in boarding schools, this addition holds its own but does not stand out. Readers of P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast's "House of Night" (St. Martin's Griffin), Richelle Mead's "Vampire Academy" (Razorbill), Lauren Kate's "Fallen" (Delacorte), Rachel Hawkins's "Hex Hall" (Hyperion), and numerous other series will find the setting familiar-and perhaps a bit stale. Arnett offers quick pacing and plenty of plot twists, but the Arthurian elements seem out of place in the novel's magic system. Purchase this book if enthusiasm for paranormal boarding-school stories still runs high.-Misti Tidman, Licking County Library, Newark, OH

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2013
Grades 6-9 A half-muggle teenager acquires new powers, meets hunky boys, and saves the world. As if it's not bad enough that Dusty, being a Nightmare, has to straddle sleeping ordinaries to feed on the mystic matter that powers their dreams, her latest assigned victim turns out to be Eli, alpha male from her old high school. Worse yet, when she's in his head, his dreams become true visionsof, for instance, a classmate's brutal murder. Arnett surrounds her smart-mouthed but mildly insecure narrator with a cast of student sirens, demons, wizards, and other magical sorts at Arkwell Academy (think Hogwarts, only in Ohio) and, not to mention the customary sniping between rivals, romantic complications, snogging, and parental head-butting. dishes up hard tests of courage and character as Dusty and allies expose a dark plot to break the governing spell that keeps magickind from taking over the planet. The paranormal dramedy tropes are well worn, but the author adds a few twists to them and provides adequate, if not complete, closure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)