Thursday, March 21, 2024

Review: The Nightmare Charade (The Arkwell Academy #3) by Mindee Arnett

Title: The Nightmare Charade

Series: The Arkwell Academy #3

Previous books in this series: The Nightmare Affair (#1) The Nightmare Dilemma (#2)

Author: Mindee Arnett

Genre: YA, urban fantasy

Publication date: August 2015

Published by: Tor Teen

Source: Purchased hardcover

Add it on Goodreads

Buy it: Amazon | B&N | Thrift Books

Synopsis: It’s her junior year at Arkwell Academy, and Dusty Everhart just wants to be alone with her boyfriend, Eli Booker. But fate is literally keeping them apart. See, Dusty is a Nightmare, who can enter Eli’s dreams to find clues to the future, but an ancient curse predicts that any romance between them is doomed to end in tragedy. Dusty and Eli are willing to take that risk, but the authorities disagree—and have assigned a chaperone to make sure their relationship is strictly platonic.

As if that’s not bad enough, they’ve been recruited by the Department of Intelligence for Magickind Secrecy (D.I.M.S.) to use their dream-seer bond to help recover the most powerful object of black magic known to magickind. The Animus Mortem can raise the dead by stealing the souls of the living... which makes tracking it down a genuine matter of life and death.

To make matters worse, one of Dusty’s friends is accused of murder and is counting on her to clear his name.

Dusty has too many dreams, too many commitments, and too many people looking over her shoulder, but a Nightmare seldom plays by the rules. Curse or no curse, chaperone or not, she has to go deep into Eli’s dreams if she’s going to find the truth—and discover a way for them to truly be together at last!

My rating: ★★★★☆

I first started this series ELEVEN years ago, and I’m only completing it now...


When I say I’m bad at finishing series, this is what I mean!! And it’s crazy because this is a series I really like! It was so much fun, I liked the world, and I also loved the characters! I’m really going to miss it all.


In this book, we had this sort of double mystery situation going on, which I enjoyed because these two separate mysteries were more connected than anyone anticipated. First, Eli and Dusty are recruited to find an artifact that, as Eli put it, is basically a zombie maker. Lol. It can raise the dead and it is a very powerful object of the black magic variety 😬


Also, Dusty’s mother is in some serious trouble and Dusty, of course, wants to help her. But on top of all of that, Eli and Dusty still have the damn Dream Seer curse they have to contend with. According to Lady Elaine and her visions of the future, if they continue to be romantically involved, things are going to end badly. Well, we finally find out how bad in this book, and... it’s pretty bad guys...


It sucked, but I’m also glad that they took the risk to continue seeing each other because they were just so cute together!! And anyway, I was holding out hope that things would turn out okay for them. If Julian and Emma from The Dark Artifices made it work, then these guys would be able to as well.


And I really enjoyed the finale of this series! There were some things I saw coming and some plot twists that caught me off guard, but it was overall a great story! The mysteries were intriguing, the Dream Team’s (lol) investigation was engaging, and I loved the characters and their relationships! I adore Dusty! She is so sassy and determined. And Eli is so sweet and charming—I loved him too! And Duty’s best friend Selene was amazing! She’s a siren and absolutely badass!! And speaking of that, the world and the mythology are other things I enjoyed about this series! I love that it had a bunch of different supernatural beings and that the main character was a literal Nightmare—that is just so cool! I really enjoyed following her and all these different characters with their cool abilities. This was overall a really solid series, and I am going to miss it.



Have you read this book? If so, what did you think about it? If not, what do you think? Does it sound like something you might want to read? Leave me a link to your review or comment below! 😊

2 comments:

  1. This is a series that I've wanted to read, glad to hear you're still enjoying it! Great review!
    Lisa Loves Literature

    ReplyDelete