City of Nightmares

A morally gray story set in a city where you can turn into your worst nightmare if you dream in your sleep. The main character is a coward who is terrified of everything. In a series of unfortunate events she has to team up with a nightmare boy who may or may not be planning on eating her. Thus begins her journey to overcoming her fears. I really enjoyed this story! It was fast paced, fun, and had a really interesting premise! Will definitely be reading book 2.

This book is wasted potential.

The setting is so cool, but instead of getting to explore a city where you can be turned into your actual greatest nightmare, most of this book is about a will-they-wont-they with a vampire. The book being as short as it was does it no favors, and while the main character is kindof annoying, I did trend towards liking her, if she was given more time to develop or do something other than worry about being a coward and think about a vampire or her dead sister.

There's also a mystery plot to this book, which...the answer to is largely not given clues for, so its impossible to guess, which makes mysteries not fun. The main character's trauma over her dead sister feels very surface level (“my sister became a giant spider, so now I am A COWARD BECAUSE MY SISTER DIED”) and I think her growth in this book felt unearned. Because, again, she spent most of the time talking to a spooky (but hot?) vampire.

If this was a book one in a larger series I would be okay with this hyper focused plot. Like if the author was planning a Dresden-type series with this. But it's the first in a duology. And I just....find this concept so interesting, and am very sad it's being used as a tool to be mediocre.

This book reads like an Anime. Wonderfully weird. The main character is a bit... much. But I can overlook the things I found a bit tedious or annoying as this is supposed to be a series and there was much growth by the end. The writing style in this book is a bit of a turn off, descriptions are lackluster in some cases, but the characters are lovely and i loved following them through the story.. The heavy under tones of consent is also a welcome sight to see.

content warnings: https://www.rschaefferbooks.com/content-warnings

I'll start this by saying that I loved Rebecca Schaeffer's previous series Market of Monsters. It was truly a dark and messed up YA series that was unlike anything else I'd ever read. Following that up would be a tough task for anyone, but City of Nightmares mostly achieves that and is an exciting new release.

Set in a Gotham-like city, this series is full of monsters and corruption. Residents have to take pills in order to prevent themselves from turning into Nightmares - whatever is the last thing that they would want to be. Ness, the protagonist, has had her life torn apart by a Nightmare and is now terrified by the prospect of turning into one or encountering one. During her work on behalf of the cult she is a part of (which she joined for food and shelter), she is caught up in an assassination attempt and survives with the help of a Nightmare. The rest of the book follows how she deals with the shift in everything she knows, and whether she can balance her fear of Nightmares with her want to be alive and search for the truth.

As always with Rebecca Schaeffer books, sometimes people are worse than monsters. And sometimes people turn into spiders and kill their family.

Ness is a pretty interesting protagonist and different to most female protagonists in fantasy type YA books. She's not brave, she doesn't want what's happening to her, and she doesn't trust anything around her. The book is well-paced and balances plot with character interactions and development. With this series being a duology, it'll be interesting to see how this is wrapped up in the final instalment later this year. I'm looking forward to more shenanigans involving Ness and Cy.