The Nightmare Charade by Mindee Arnett [Review]

4 out of 5 Robots!

The Nightmare Charade by Mindee Arnett
Genre: YA Fantasy
Release: August 4, 2015
Hardcover: 384 Pages
Publisher: Tor Teen
My Copy: Purchased
Reviewer: Shannon

Book Summary:

It’s her junior year at Arkwell Academy, and Dusty Everhart just wants to be alone with her boyfriend, Eli Booker. But fate is literally keeping them apart. See, Dusty is a Nightmare, who can enter Eli’s dreams to find clues to the future, but an ancient curse predicts that any romance between them is doomed to end in tragedy. Dusty and Eli are willing to take that risk, but the authorities disagree—and have assigned a chaperone to make sure their relationship is strictly platonic.

As if that’s not bad enough, they’ve been recruited by the Department of Intelligence for Magickind Secrecy (D.I.M.S.) to use their dream-seer bond to help recover the most powerful object of black magic known to magickind. The Animus Mortem can raise the dead by stealing the souls of the living…which makes tracking it down a genuine matter of life and death.

To make matters worse, one of Dusty’s friends is accused of murder and is counting on her to clear his name.

Dusty has too many dreams, too many commitments, and too many people looking over her shoulder, but a Nightmare seldom plays by the rules. Curse or no curse, chaperone or not, she has to go deep into Eli’s dreams if she’s going to find the truth—and discover a way for them to truly be together at last!

(Courtesy of the Publisher)

Shannon's Thoughts:

Well, this was a fun and very satisfying conclusion to the Arkwell Academy series.  Just when Dusty and her friends thought they could get a breather after defeating bad guy Marrow in the previous book.  But no, they are needed again to find the Animus Mortem, or "Death's Heart", which can raise the dead.  It has gone missing.  To further complicate things, Dusty and Eli are being forced to keep their distance due to the curse that says one of them will kill the other.

I can't say the mystery aspect was my favorite part because I felt it stalled for a large part of the book.  Everything else kind of took precedence (the curse, for example), but I will say I didn't see the twist coming.  How tricksy, Arnett, how tricksy.  I thought the ending was the best part.  It was nail-biting and exciting.  And I thought the ultimate conclusion to Dusty's story was satisfying and sweet.  

Overall, this series is a fun one.  It has a Harry Potter-esque feel to it (magical academy for magic-kind, curses, prophecies, friends solving mysteries, teachers entrusting students with far too much responsibilities, etc).  I think fans of Harry Potter or books with magic boarding schools would enjoy this series.