The Nightmare Affair- Mindee Arnett

The Nightmare Affair

By: Mindee Arnett

Hardcove: 367 pages

Expected publication: March 5th 2013 
Publisher: Tor Teen
Language: English
ISBN: 0765333333 
Read it or not: Read it! 

From the publisher's website

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.

No Spoilers: 

I found that this was an original, fun young adult fantasy novel. Our heroine, Dusty, is a spunky oddball.  She can't seem to keep her mouth from getting her in trouble. Despite living at a magical school she struggles with typical adolescent concerns.  Fast, fun, easy read. Do not expect too much depth. Reminded me of the earlier Harry Potter books. 

Yummy analysis with spoilers: 

Dusty is the child of a nightmare and a mortal and did not come into her powers until adolescence. So in addition to all the normal trials she has to transfer to a magical school and adapt to a new life. In the opening scene she is feeding on the dreams or fictus of this hot boy who she used to go to high school with. Turns out he is dreaming about a murder at her school and then that murder comes true. He also can see her and her magic did not have the intended effect on him. They are a dream-seer pair, and can predict the future. The non magical boy who is the son of a cop is forced to transfer to Arkwell Academy.  The school uses them to try and ferret out the killer, who is going after 'keepers'. The keepers are bound with their life-force to protect a magical object. Turns out this object is Merlin's sword which holds a powerful protection spell in place. Merlin is actually evil and has a pet phoenix that allows him to be resurrected. He is after the sword to get all of his old powers back. 

 One of the story lines that caught my attention was that of Dusty and her mother, Moira. Moira abandoned Dusty to live with her father when Dusty was very young. Dusty believes that this may be in part due to her half mortal heritage. To make things worse, Moira has a reputation as a trouble maker. Dusty constantly has to prove she is not her mother at school. When Moira becomes involved she is secretive and Dusty at one point is convinced that Moira is the killer. She's not. Moira is betrayed by the boy she's sorta seeing and her teacher. At the end of it all Dusty and her mother have a heartwarming apology fest and begin the process of healing their relationship. In the end, Merlin gets away. I imagine we will be seeing him as a villain in the follow up novels. It was kinda strange to see Merlin cast as a villain, but also interesting to have traditional archetypes shaken up. At the end of the book Dusty and Eli semi found a supernatural detective agency. I look forward to seeing what they get up to in the future novels.