Sunday, November 17, 2013

Review: The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett

The Nightmare Affair (The Arkwell Academy, #1)Series: The Arkwell Academy #1
Release date: March 5th 2013
Publisher: Tor Teen
Purchase: Amazon | B&N

Synopsis via Goodreads:

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.

*Received ebook as a gift.




This turned out to be an okay read for me. The overall plot was good, with mysterious twists and witty writing, but the story didn't pull me in as deep as I'd hoped it would. Still, I'd like to continue with the series in hopes of experiencing the wow factor further on. 

Back to Nightmare Affair...Let's talk main character
I have mixed feelings about Dusty. Sometimes I liked her because of her feisty personality; it definitely kept me entertained. But at times I wanted to shake her because I was caught between being annoyed or thought she was too quick to jump to conclusions. Wait. That's actually a good thing. She's supposed to be out of the loop and make the wrong assumptions about who's a suspect. It's a story. I guess, I wanted her to be a bit more right about certain leads and there were times I wished she'd just figure one thing out because it was starting to get too drawn out.

Aside from the craziness of Dusty, I liked the world building. I found it to be interesting. The entire concept and elaborate details of Arkwell Academy was intriguing. Still, I did get a bit confused in various parts, trying to understand what was being described and what exactly was taking place. Thankfully, as the story progressed it all started to get clear. 

In regards to other characters, loved her mom, and I liked how Mindee pulled her into the mystery and made everyone question her position. I felt like Dusty's mom was a total badass and I even enjoyed her character more than any other at times. 

As for love interests, Paul was too perfect for me, so by the ending I was screaming, "YES! Thank you for finally letting her see that." Eli on the other hand, didn't really win me over. His feelings didn't really convince me. Then again, neither did Paul's but both were interesting boys nonetheless, whereas how their lives were depicted in the story and how being at Arkwell Academy affected them.

I liked Selene too. Almost forgot about her (my bad). She was a good friend and I liked that being who she was, power-wise, she was a great person; very inspiring. The type of friend any girl should have.

Once again, The Nightmare Affair was an okay read. It's like nothing I'd read before so I'm very curious about where the series will go next and how the characters will develop. Hopefully, I'll be able to immerse myself greatly in the second book and be blow away to a point where it makes up for the faint thrill effect I found in the first one. 




9 comments:

  1. I love boarding school books so I might have to give this one a try. Isn't it funny sometimes how you don't love a book but you still want to continue the series to see what happens?

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    Replies
    1. Yes, weird lol but it intrigued me enough to keep going :)

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  2. I'm glad you mostly enjoyed this, despite the issues you had with it. Nice review!

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  3. I like the boarding school settings in books, this one does sound good too. I hope next book is better for you. Great review.

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  4. I also liked Dusty's mom! Hope you'll be reading book two soon.

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  5. I really enjoyed this one a lot even though I agree with you, I wasn't wowed.

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