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City of Nightmares: The thrilling, surprising young adult urban fantasy

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The twists in the plot are decent, particularly in the first 3/4 of the book. I'm not a big fan of the very end, because the book enters the paranormal realm there more distinctly than sci-fi, but overall it works.

From start to finish, City of Nightmares was a wild ride that constantly kept me on my toes. I highly recommend this one to anyone who enjoys paranormal or urban fantasy with a little bit of a spook factor. Did the pacing lag a bit? Yeah. Did we also kind of rush things there at the end of this first book? Maybe. But honestly, I had such a good time that I don't really care about that.And that means you never- never- know where it’s going to go, or what’s even possible. And yet! What does happen always winds up feeling plausible and even foreshadowed! I don’t know how that’s possible.

Ness's new home is with a group called Friends of the Restful Soul, everyone else in the city thinks it is a cult but to Ness it is the place where she is laying low with all of her fears and hiding in a room most of the time curled up on a bed just wishing the world outside away. When Ness's place at the could be cult's sanctuary is threatened, she is willing to go outside the current jobs she has been doing there in hopes of making herself useful so she doesn't get sent away. That is when everything goes wrong and Ness learns that the life she held onto for safety was probably just a big lie, as she tries to find out why now someone is trying to kill her. Now, with that out of the way, let's dissect the rest of this story. Like how Ness's sister dissected their dad as a giant spider. Priya’s mouth clamps shut and she frowns, casting me an annoyed look. I’ve won and she knows it. She may not like this gig, but she needs it. Priya rolls her eyes. In Priya’s world, everything is practice for an interview to join Nightmare Defense. Ness lives in a crime filled city where people's worst nightmares happen to wander the street, just your normal, average, every day type of thing.When people dream, they have nightmares, and when they have nightmares they turn into their worst fear. So one day Ness's own sister forgot to take a pill that prevents dreams and turned into a huge spider that ended up killing their father. Ness lives in a corrupt and crazy city where literal nightmares roam the streets. In Ness's world if you go to sleep and have a nightmare, you become that nightmare in life when you wake up. Some of them look mostly like regular people, just with red skin and horns, others, well let's just say others don't look human at all. Ness knows this well since her sister, the one protector she has ever really had succumbed to that fate. It's a really compelling and terrifying concept that demands digging deep into characters and understanding both what they fear most and what that fear would manifest as physically, while also leading to some incredibly disturbing body horror. And I'll give the book credit, it's pretty frightening and disturbing. It could be more creative with some aspects of it, like why would their only be twelve types of vampires? But it's overall pretty solid. One of my favorite books of the year! Phenomenally fun, with a vivid, vicious world that's stuffed with monsters (both human and otherwise) and a heroine you'll root for. I absolutely loved it!" — Sarah Beth Durst, award-winning author of The Queens of Renthia series The sci-fi-esque elements of the book work better than the paranormal elements, such as the Nightmare Boy.

So I thought that thread of character realism in this caricaturized, fictional version of our real world's dark side was awesome. It lent a dose of grounding to the sensational world building. And it made for a very good reading experience. Ever since her sister became a man-eating spider and slaughtered her way through town, nineteen-year-old Ness has been terrified - terrified of some other Nightmare murdering her, and terrified of ending up like her sister. Because in Newham, the city that never sleeps, dreaming means waking up as your worst fear. And this book sends a good message too, that you are not your fears and you shouldn't let them control you.

My sister’s worst nightmare was a giant, man-eating spider. I know because that’s what she turned into when she went to sleep for the last time. And the plot is meandering and weirdly a little too close to the Market of Monsters series. Girl works for someone shady, girl meets a bad boy who's literally a monster that has prey to on people to survive, things go haywire and girl and bad boy work together to survive, girl and bad boy return to society and find out that the shady person was in fact bad while also becoming close friends (but no romance, something I like about both of Schaeffer's works is how she makes the central relationships friendships between a guy and girl, Ness is also implied to be aroace). The big difference is that one of these books did that in an interesting way while the other is City of Nightmares. So I understand something about what it’s like to have a family member turn into a giant bug and try to eat you. It’s not hard to find people in this city who’ve lost loved ones to

There's a subtle romance happening between Ness and Cy, me being me though I also ship her with the Phantom so we'll see where it goes.Priya’s eyes are shining with anger, or maybe reverence. They kind of look the same on Priya. “They took out a monster.” Undeterred, still grinning, Priya whips out a spray can from her belt and starts spraying something in the air at the Nightmare. Pressurized salt, maybe. A lot of the ethereal Nightmares come from people’s fears of old ghost stories, which means they can often be stopped with salt because that’s what the legends say stop them. The simmering undercurrent of tension that permeates the entire plot also really amps up the mystery aspect, as Ness attempts—with her only friend Priya and fellow boat survivor Cy, to find out what really caused the explosion. I also really enjoyed that old school, crime noir-style dynamic that we see between Ness and both Priya and Cy. Oh, I'm OBSESSED with this book. Which I honestly wasn't expecting but I'm so glad that's the case, because this book is amazing. She’s small and looks even smaller in her tiny apartment. Like most apartments in Newham, it’s basically one room—double bed in one corner across from a tiny kitchenette against the wall and an attempt at a sitting room with one skinny sofa and table. Every available surface is covered in flowers.

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