About the Book
-
Author:
- Tracy Wolff
- Genres:
- Contemporary
- Fantasy
- Paranormal
- Voices:
- Cis Girl
- Straight
- White (Non-Specified)
Cover Story: Pretty Deadly
BFF Charm: Yay
Talky Talk: Paranormal AF
Bonus Factor: Paranormal Creatures
Factor: Series Starter
Anti-Bonus Factor: Dan Scott Award for Awful Parenting
Relationship Status: Fling
Content Warning: Sweet Nightmare contains scenes of graphic violence, gore, death, fire and burning, drowning, bullying, monster attacks that relate to common phobias, and natural disasters.
Cover Story: Pretty Deadly
Two things on this cover could kill you. Which will be the first remains to be seen.
The Deal:
Clementine Calder has lived her entire life at Calder Academy, a school for troubled paranormal youth. She wants nothing more than to leave the island off the coast of Texas and go anywhere else, but her mother—the head of the school and the Calder family—insists that she never leave the school’s grounds.
When a category five hurricane threatens the school, Clementine’s mom makes a plan to get them all to safety, but nothing seems to go right. And when Clementine and her friends find themselves stuck, with the dampening field that keeps the students’ powers at bay down, they find that they’re fighting more than just the storm.
BFF Charm: Yay
Clementine is a bit sheltered and a bit standoffish because of it. She doesn’t really belong at Calder Academy, but because of her name and the circumstances of her birth, she’s forced to attend. (Unlike the other students, she never did anything to get herself sent there.) She only has a few friends, and might be hard to be friends with—especially if I were a student at Calder, given that I’d likely be a bit of a bad seed to get sent there. But she’s got a strong sense of loyalty and would be a supremely helpful friend to have were I to find myself in a tight spot.
Swoonworthy Scale: 6
Jude Abernathy-Lee is the love of Clementine’s life and her former best friend. He hasn’t so much as spoken to her in three years, after kissing her once when they were both 14. Clementine hates him for the brush-off and wants little to do with him, especially when they’re forced to work together on a school project. But as the storm gets worse and they’re forced to do more than just a group project, Clementine realizes her hate is not hate at all. And Jude might have run because he was scared, not because he didn’t feel the same.
Talky Talk: Paranormal AF
Wolff’s writing is consistently entertaining, although it sometimes feels a little too try-hard and somewhat too time-specific. (Some of the references she makes will be very dated in a few years, and it’s obvious at times that she’s not a teenager, if you know what I mean.) Sweet Nightmare is also extremely graphic, so reader beware—on all counts.
Bonus Factor: Paranormal Creatures
I love the Crave series for including many different types of paranormal creatures that aren’t normally featured in fantasy books. Sweet Nightmare continues that trend; Clementine is a manticore, which is pretty dang badass even while it’s not something I’d ever want to be. (I can barely manage to get around with two legs and two arms, I can’t imagine having four legs, a tail, and wings to control all at once.)
Factor: Series Starter
Sweet Nightmare is the first in a new series that is a spin-off of Wolff’s Crave series. There are at least three books up on Goodreads so far, and there are six Crave books, so you might want to wait a bit if you’re someone who likes to read a series when all the books are available.
There are characters in Sweet Nightmare that will be familiar to anyone who’s read Crave, but you don’t need to have read that series in order to dive into this one.
Anti-Bonus Factor: Dan Scott Award for Awful Parenting
Clementine’s mother is a stern, no-nonsense woman who seems to have it out for her own daughter, giving her the hardest/worst duties and making an example of her whenever possible. There are glimpses of a woman who could maybe be a good person, but for the most part she’s pretty dang awful.
Relationship Status: Fling
As much as part of me wants to pretend I don’t love stories like yours, Book, it’s impossible to deny that I get sucked in quickly and easily. I don’t see us being meant for the long haul, but I think we can have fun for a while.
Literary Matchmaking
If you enjoyed this book, go back to the beginning with Wolff’s Crave series.
Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing is another fantasy that feels modern.
Rainbow Rowell’s Simon Snow series also features paranormal creatures at a boarding school.
FTC Full Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from Entangled: Teen, but got neither a private dance party with Tom Hiddleston nor money in exchange for this review. Sweet Nightmare is available now.
