By Neena Viel
Many thanks to St. Martin’s Griffin and NetGalley for the ARC of this book!
Calla is twenty-five years old and she’s been struggling since becoming the guardian of her younger brother, Jamie. Her job is in jeopardy because she keeps being called to his school. Their brother Dre is two years younger than Calla had promised to help with Jamie but he hasn’t really been much of a help. Calla is stressed and tired. On top it, she gets this Nightmare where her brothers die. Jamie gets involved in a protest and things go wrong. Now the siblings must go on the run. They hide in a cabin in the woods and now the Nightmare is coming to life.
Oh, where do I start. Supposedly, this is a horror book, but I wasn’t scared for one moment. I went out of my comfort zone here to try horror since it’s not really my genre. Well, I was bored and confused through a lot of the book. Was I questioning what was real and what was a nightmare? Yes, because I couldn’t tell the difference. When the nightmare character has the same name as the real character, how do you tell them apart? Once in a while, we’d get “prom Calla” or something similar, but it wasn’t all the time.
There was a lot of racial politics in this book that felt unnecessary. There was also some language in this book that I didn’t love. Usually language doesn’t bother me much, but when it’s over and over, I could do without it. It takes half the book for any of the nightmare action to begin, so it felt very slow.
This is a debut book for this author, and I really hate to be harsh. It just really was not for me. I don’t ever DNF books, and I really wanted to DNF this one. BUT.. remember, this is just my lowly opinion. There are others that loved it, so don’t just go solely by my review. This is just one girl’s honest opinion.
Publish date: February 4, 2025
Find the book here.
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