Sweet Nightmares by Chynna Pace
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Alex Rokosz is a fifteen year old girl who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina where she lives with her sister and her mother, that is until a tragic accident took the life of their mother and started a series of events, culminating in leaving everything behind to go and live with their grandmother, Matilda in straight after the funeral. All Alex ever wanted was a loving family, but that is the one thing she has never had, but she hopes that this grandmother whom she has never met or heard of is going to be just that, however, when she pulls up in a hearse and is short in stature and shorter in temper, Alex believes that her hopes are dashed, even her sister is unusually quiet, even for her, so it is a long and lonely car ride to their new home while her thoughts about her current situation and what she might find out from this new relative about her father and his side of the family.

When they pull up to the house, it is pitch black and freezing cold, so the light and warmth are inviting and Alex runs inside to see their new home, however, the tour is short and sharp as they are shown to their rooms, but before she can settle in for the night, she checks on her sister as she tries to keep her routine as close to normal as possible. The next morning, as Alex is getting ready to start her day in the bathroom with bleary eyes and a headache, suddenly there is a knocking on the door, but when it isn’t her sister, she panics, grabs her sister from her room and flies down the stairs shouting for her grandma because there is a young man upstairs and Alex thinks that he is breaking in. When her grandma announces that it is just Kacper, her seventeen year old housemate, Alex is shocked and when she asks why Matilda didn’t tell her, she just shrugs and says she would find out anyway, so she didn’t think it was important.

When her sister asks to go into the local town, Kacper agrees to take them, this is where they go into a couple of the stores and meet some townspeople, some are nice and others not so much, but when she tries to talk to anyone about them, she is shot down and discouraged from seeing them again. As the time passes and Alex finds everything about her new place odd, but as the events of the last few days turn over in her head and she starts to think that what she feels are normal for her family, are not necessarily normal for others, this is compounded when she follows Matilda and Kacper when they go out at night as she is intrigued by what they are doing, but when she sees them fighting a nightmare, she immediately wants to know more. Will Alex be able to make sense of the new world of magic, dreams and nightmares and her place in it, or will it all be too much and sweep her away on a course she doesn’t want? This is a fantasy adventure where nothing is as it seems and dreams and reality intermix to pull you into their world until you are so engrossed that you have to read until the end.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

View all my reviews