Sweet Nightmare By Tracy Wolff
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
Summary from Goodreads:
The scariest school on earth
Is about to experience real fear…
Most schools are about being the best. This school? It’s about being the worst. Calder Academy is where the rogue paranormals go. The ones who break the rules or lose control. And when that happens for vamps, werewolves, witches, and dark fae? It gets pretty freakin scary.
I should know. Because I’m trapped here.
Look, every seventeen-year-old girl thinks their mom is a tyrant. But mine just happens to run Calder Academy, which paints a giant target on my back. The way I make it through these dark halls is by steering clear of the things―and kids―who go bump in the night.
Especially Jude Abernathy-Lee.
But when a freak storm hits our isolated island, I’m stuck without a backup plan. The power is gone. The lights are out. And our worst nightmares are suddenly real―and out for blood.
Now the only way to survive is to align myself with one evil to avoid the other.
And the only thing worse than the idea of getting close to Jude? Secretly loving every minute of it.
Confession:
This newest book set in the Crave world and I got off to a bit of a bad start. But luckily I decided to stick it out and I ended up quite liking it. It is very different from the other series, much darker and scarier, but I eventually warmed up to the characters and the story. I still think it was too long, as most of this author’s books are, but it does read fairly quickly so that is a bit of a plus.
The first person narrative is told from only one perspective, Clementine’s, and although I didn’t initially like her very much, she kind of grew on me. She is a bit of a weak character, but she eventually finds her strength, but mostly just because shit keeps happening around her and she is just trying to survive and keep her friends alive as well. There were a few times when I felt rather sorry for her, as she is a bit of mess throughout most of the book. I did like her relationship with Jude, which grew throughout the story and I could definitely see them getting together at the end.
Jude was a bit of a pain and just a tad too broody for my taste. I had to look up what an oneiroi was, because we don’t get an explanation for that until very late in the story. But you could tell that he really had feelings for Clementine even when he was pushing her away. We do get one chapter at the end from his perspective, which was interesting.
So this book had a lot, and I mean a lot, of other types of paranormals. So many, that it was hard to keep track. I also felt like most of them were never explained, especially their powers or the dynamics of why they hated certain other species. There were many scenes where all of the paranormals just randomly attack each other without provocation, and that just seemed really weird. There were also way too many secondary characters, many of which die, so it was hard to get attached to any of them. For a book that focused on friendship and found family it was a bit weird that so many characters close to Clementine died.
The plot also had too much going on to keep track of. The plot needed to be a bit more simple and focus on one or two of the many plots. The pacing was pretty good, lots of action and slow parts. I was also a bit pissed that Remy wasn’t given much page time. I mean I did come to this series expecting him to have a bigger role, so it was disappointed that he just wasn’t there. A map of the island would have been helpful as I kept getting a bit lost as to where they were in relation to other places mentioned.
Overall this was an ok story that I mostly enjoyed. Although you could read it without having read the Crave series, I’m not sure I would recommend that. There were to many assumptions made in the story that if you are not familiar with the world then you would be totally lost. But if you are a fan of the other series, certainly give this one a chance. Will I pick up the next book? Maybe. Right now we don’t know much about it, but there are some unanswered questions at the end of this book that I am looking to knowing more about.
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