I did not expect to love this book as much as I did! I was obviously pulled in by the premise, but you know what? It was so so much more than that!

We travelled across so many important topics, the subject matters were literally on point! Schaeffer has nailed the main character in this one, she's suffered trauma, she's flawed and just can't bring herself to trust in her own abilities just to do life. The self doubt made her such a relatable MC and I was rooting for her the whole way.

Not to mention the havoc that the nightmares brought into the fold! I mean, who would want to be turned into their own worst nightmare! This book is so heavy on the important subject matter, but delivered in such a way that its pure genius! A thouroughly fun, witty and banter filled book to keep you engaged and just the right level of WTF at each page turn!

I also was lucky enough to have listened along with the audio too. It made for a fantastically immersive read and it was paced so well by the narrator! 100% would recommend an immersive read of this if you've not tried one before!

this is giving me 2010s ya fantasy vibes which is not a bad thing but i guess i was expecting something darker, more innovative even than we actually get. tries and fails to be edgy. ymmv.

Great audio narrator. Easy to listen too.


This was fine. I enjoyed the story and thought the concept was cool. I liked the camp horror vibes and the way the author writes. It didn't rock my world but I had a good time with it. I'll admit I found the MC a bit irritating to start with because of her cowardice but she grew on me and then when Si turned up, she became a lot more interesting in her interactions with him. A fun book.

The thing is, this is a good book. The author really has a knack for writing horror—it’s great. However, the soap box was so high I was afraid Rebecca will fall and break her neck. There are very clear moments when the characters are nothing more than mouthpieces for the author—which is not inherently a bad thing. A lot of authors do that. But it was done without, how to say it, smoothness. Without grace or finesse. I could see the puppet strings. It’s a personal preference, but that made me enjoy the story less. Aside from that—I really loved Ness as a protagonist. We don’t have enough cowardly leading ladies in our stories. Kuddos for that.

P.S. The pterodactyl was criminally underused. I expect to see more of him in future instalments.


Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-ARC copy of this book, in exchange for this honest review.

This was a decent read. It opened with a bang and the concept of nightmares coming alive is so incredibly interesting. A wonderful idea.

I am however a bit surprised at the writing. Schaffer's earlier works really seems to have a much higher standard and this felt a bit juvenile. There was also a little too much "correctness" for my taste. It felt like I was being taught a lesson as I was reading. In the audiobook version the writing came out even worse because now every word became so obvious. I did like the narrator though, they did a great job.

But all in all, the plot was there and the idea of this is so good that I found myself enjoying what I was reading.

Thank you NetyGalley for this advance audiobook.

I requested this as it's advertised "Gotham meets Strange the Dreamer" - Strange the Dreamer being one of my all time favourite books.

However once I started listening it reminded me more of Monsters of Verity - which I really didn't enjoy,
In this world your nightmare manifest into reality with some ugly consequences.

Whilst I appreciate the premise and the work behind this book, this is a case of it's me, not the book. This book simply wasn't for me.

I read the premise of this book and got so excited - if you dream it will be a nightmare, and you will turn into that nightmare....also it's set in Gotham but with no Batman and an added religious cult. This had a lot of potential and it mostly lived up to it!

There was....quite a bit social commentary that was valid, but not really input into the story the right way - it felt a bit more after-school-special than part of the novel at times. There was a whole chunk that was Rebecca Schaeffer talking rather than our MC, Ness. The actual plot and action of the story is really good though - gritty and depressing, but the inner monologue that didn't add to the character development, plot, or world build was so eye-roll inducing that it very nearly made me give up on the book the second or third time it happened.

This book is also guilty of my number one pet peeve of duologies/trilogies - it could be a standalone and doesn't end at an end point....I feel it could have been edited down and this made into one big book...but we'll see how book two fares.

Narration was really good and really fit the tone of the story.

The thing that grabbed me about CITY OF NIGHTMARES, that made me want to read it, was the premise - if you dream, you transform into your nightmare, however monstrous that might be. It is just such a cool idea with so much potential, and the book follows up on that.

It leads into a book that discusses what it is to be a monster, whether it's physical or not, whether it can be fought or not. It also looks at how we can excuse the monstrousness in ourselves and fear the otherness in others. By having physical monstrousness, it was a really nice way to look at how appearance can mask reality, forcing people to look beyond the surface.

This quite naturally sets the stage for a discussion of fear, rational or otherwise, and how it can take over your life, impact relationships and the ability to go about life. It felt to me like it was both a look at PTSD and general anxiety at once, exploring different aspects of them.

I also really liked the discussion of toxicity around romances that can involve monsters (mostly vampires) and how what can be portrayed as sexy in media is really not in real life. (This is a major bug bear of mine about romances in SFF, the way toxicity can be portrayed as OK because it's "just part of that creature's nature.") This lead into a discussion of how such portrayals can take away the ability for victims to see themselves as victims or be able to report events because society has been conditioned to see forms of abuse as fine and romantic and that if you object you just "don't get it."

The setting is gritty and dark and grungy. It's a corrupt, capitalist hellscape that felt very much on the sci-fi/dystopia boundary. While this probably could be called fantasy because of the monsters, the way it was treated as a contamination allowing something in means I'm leaning towards more a sci-fi classification. It was fun either way!

This book is very much the start of a duology that demands a second book is read. None of the primary mysteries are solved, and in fact the story only builds the two major questions into more pressing ones. Plus a new threat is introduced/released at the end. This means there isn't a lot of closure at the end of the book, like reaching the end of a tale, but instead feels more like reaching the midpoint of an overall tale.

City of Nightmares by Rebecca Schaeffer Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld is a new: City of Nightmares, series. I wasn't sure at first to be honest but once I started to listen to it I was hooked. I didn't want it to end. This was one weird book but an interesting audiobook.
I am looking forward to Book 2 in this series, especially as its not my usual gene I read or listen to but the cover just caught my eye. I'm so glad it did.

City of Nightmares by Rebecca Schaeffer is 8 hrs and 41 mins and was excellent. I highly recommend it.

A top-notch narrator who really immerses us in the plot, which turns out to be very original. A dystopian fantasy in which evolves a main character haunted by the death of her sister, transformed into nightmares. To stop the plots and mysterious attacks, Ness will have to investigate and dig into the corrupted depths of the system.
Audio book quick to listen to, it talks about subjects that can hurt like human trafficking, death etc. but it is both light and dark. We finish the book with a lot of unanswered questions but it did not leave me unsatisfied. I can't wait to see what's next!

The audiobook narrator is a mainstay of YA and I first heard her as Lou from Serpent and Dove. I was a little surprised at the choice because I'm not sure she fits Ness, our protagonist here and a person who is trapped by fear. However, Saskia does fit the 20s vibes of prohibition and a Gotham-esque underworld. She did a good job with this.

The story itself was a bit too thin for my liking. I couldn't sink my teeth into the world (no pun intended) and sometimes I felt more like the author was trying to get ahead of people poking holes in the world more than to tell a complicated story. There were explanations for things that I didn't need and not enough depth in other areas.

Many people seem to be loving this so perhaps it's just not quite my genre. I'm usually only drawn to adult literary dystopian - more like The Road or Station Eleven - rather than like Divergent or similar. I found this repetitive and ultimately I wouldn't seek out the book two that is being set up and that I assume is forthcoming.

The conclusion was both unsatisfying to me and rushed. The lectures on vampire films and consent felt over the top. I don't know whether I agree or disagree with the analysis itself but it was really heavy-handed.

I did race through this and found it easy to read. I do personally prefer more of a challenge though.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

City of Nightmares is the first book in Rebecca Shaeffer’s new Series of the same Name.

And it was fun. I honestly don’t have that much more to say about it. The concept of the Nightmares is really cool, I just wish we could have seen a few more examples of the curse. But maybe that will
come in the sequel.
The characters are fine but not really memorable although I do like that Ness has
a very clear development arch. I do also like her love interest and how subtle the building of the romance was. I just hope the situation with a certain white-haired mystery doesn’t develop into a
love triangle.
I’m sorry this review isn’t longer, I just genuinely don’t know what else to say.

3.5/5 stars

This was AMAZING. I don't know what it is but it was such a GREAT book! The premise is so fun, so much imagination, so many wild things can do on. It was giving me young James Patterson book vibes, and it felt like such a nostalgic read. It read very lower YA, but it had some older themes and a little bit of language. The no romance was great too, I feel like Ness could be ace potentially, with how she lacks that attraction and is more into the friendship feels. There was a bit of banter laughs throughout, and I loved Ness as a character. Totally relatable (to me), not a strong badass quippy MC but much more of a scaredy-cat, selfish, watch out for herself type of character which was such a breath of fresh air.

It's overall very slow and there were a lot happening while still not having much actions, but I was hooked!

We're really on the introduction of the world and how the city works, and it indeed really makes me think of Gotham (with its monsters, police corruption, trafficking, being so used to shootings that you just impatiently wait one is over so you can cross the road), and I loved that, it's so rare to see in a YA fantasy.

We talk a LOT about fear and what it does to us. Fear is really present here and it's the center of everything: you can transform in your own fear, in what you fear the most, into what's called Nightmares : and I loved how some fear were common to multiple people, how some fear can be transfered from seeing them in the news, how some fear turns out the take form when it's something like "loss". I loved all subtilities at the ending with the fears and I really can't wait to see what happens next! I can't say anything about the ending because it's very spoilery, but I really feel like we got introduced up to this part, to that key moment without specifically having a cliffhanger, but that will (I hope) do lot of things in the next/final book!

I really liked Ness and how she evolves within the book: it's not quick, we go round and round about the same thing, the same fear and same reactions, but it stays humain and how she evolves is done well. I also loved the importance put on relationships with friends, I felt so happy to read/listen to some parts I agreed to! The friendship between Ness and Priya is really done well, and I loved how the friendship between Ness and Cy came to life. I really can't wait to see more about these 3 characters in book 2!

An enjoyable fantasy novel set in a world where people change their worst nightmares.  Given the plot, I wish it could have been a bit darker, but overall, I think this will be commercially successful with the older YA market.

4.5 stars rounded up

<b>PLOT:</b>

We follow our main character, Ness, who lives in a city filled with 'nightmares'. This is a world in which when people dream and have nightmares, they become versions of these exact nightmares - vampires, pterodactyls, spiders, even so far as becoming germs. This has created an incredibly frightening and horrifying world in which dreaming is the last thing people want to do, and there are measures in place to prevent people from dreaming.

Ness works in 'The Friends of the Restful Soul', an organisation offering free therapy sessions to victims of nightmares or those who have lost loved ones to nightmares - which others describe as a cult. Ness doesn't see it that way, but rather sees it as a safe haven from the world around her. When a simple task she is asked to complete goes wrong and she ends up in an explosion alongside a nightmare she fears will eat her, she finds out the world she lives in is very dark.

<b>REVIEW:</b>

I <b><i>*loved*</i></b> this book. Before I go into depth - we have a <u> HEALTHY MALE MAIN CHARACTER</u>. I repeat : NON-TOXIC MAIN MALE CHARACTER - this is genuinely such a shock to my system given how many toxic mmc's I have now read that an uncontroversial dude has blown my damn mind. We have a female main character who is scared but has to be brave due to circumstances. We have a best friend who is badass and genuinely cares but isn't just a there for decoration, and is genuinely someone I want to know more about in future books. You have a super cool city filled with people's worst fears incarnated. You have a corrupt society which the main character resides within but hates. You have topics like empowerment, therapy, strength, choices, 'making the best of a bad situation' and I love it. You have social commentary on toxic relationship portrayals in the media, about consent and about what it means to truly be okay with something. I can gush about this book for ages I think I am SO happy I encountered it.

One thing I found vital in this book is that our main character is pathologically terrified of nightmares, and her reactions are very much PTSD responses which really made you feel her fear as though you were in her head. You understand her thought process, you hear her trying to minimise her fear and rationalise and still finds herself scared - this is a major stumbling block for her to overcome and one we wholeheartedly want to cheer her on in doing. Her mental health is not diminished, and though she is self-deprecating, our MMC never makes her feel bad about having panic attacks, about having certain requirements in order to feel safe. Again, a very strongly non-toxic mmc - I love him a LOT.

The reason I didn't give this the full 5-stars (though happily rounded up) was because it did feel like the wording choice at places was a bit repetitive, with phrases like 'hide in my corner', 'crunch on bones' etc being used again and again even within a chapter. That said, I genuinely don't think it took anything away from the story, I just wish the phrasing had been a bit more creative at some points.

The worldbuilding was excellent and clearly very well thought out - very Gotham-esque, gritty and supernatural but at the same time just corrupt and grimy. I could really see the concept of this book going further and I know more books are planned. The book doesn't end on a major cliffhanger but leaves a lot of threads still ongoing, with a mini 'post-credit scene' feeling ending which I think was excellent given the genre this falls within. I truly truly want to know more about this world, about the characters within it and explore further and cannot wait to do it.

I read this book as an audiobook and really felt the narrator did a great job, a really cool way to consume this book though I'm sure reading it on paper would also provide a great experience. She did really bring her to life for me though so I do think I would say if you have a choice, audiobook is a good one!

TLDR;

Read this book okay thanks bye!

<i>I was provided with a complimentary copy of this audiobook by Hodder & Stoughton Audio via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, which I leave voluntarily</i>

Set in a dystopian future, a terrible event has occurred leading to people manifesting into the subject of their own worst nightmares as they sleep. With this level of disarray within the city, corruption is widespread and gangs own the streets. Extreme and dangerous nightmares are destroyed by a publicly funded subsidiary of defence known as The Nightmare Hunters.

Residing in the city of Newham, Ness has had a traumatic past leading her to be terrified of almost everything. As a young girl she was recruited by a group known as The Friends Of The Restful Soul, whose mission statement is to give therapy to those who have had close experience with nightmare transformations and aid in their healing. But a series of events leads to Ness being thrown into the dark underworld of the city, on the run with few to turn to.



A very clever and original premise with an exciting, action-packed plot - thoroughly enjoyable. I believe this is part of a series so will definitely be looking out for more.

The narrator is great and believable as Nessa, bringing her fears and anxiety to life.

Unfortunately the narrator and I did not vibe. I switched between the ebook and the audiobook. I guess, this just wasn't for me.

My main problems weren't related to the narrator though. The writing in my opinion was really bad and repetitive, as if the author thought, we readers wouldn't remember anything. I get it, Ness thinks of her as a coward. Telling me over and over again only makes me more annoyed. Additional it was told not shown ... Could have been done so much better.
Also the way, how the author includes topics such as how fiction romanticises abuse felt unnaturally and forced.

Still, no dnf. Eventually I will read the sequel. The idea overall was creative and had so much potential.

Part horror comedy, part exploration of anxiety and childhood trauma - City of Nightmares was a surprise favourite read of 2022.

The book follows Ness, a deeply traumatised young woman living in a world where your deepest fears are only a sleep away from coming true. The characters are surprisingly funny and incredibly well-written, and the worldbuilding is an intriguing and entertaining balance of absurd, horrifying and well-constructed.

City of Nightmares feels like the answer to the grossly problematic YA supernatural romances of the 2010s. The main characters spend the whole book learning boundaries, taking time to understand each other, and unpicking the societal constructs that have created them. There is brilliant discussion especially in the literal metaphor of vampires, deconstructing how fiction has a fully realised impact on real life.

The audiobook narrator has a brilliant voice for listening to, with a great balance between voice work and narrative. I couldn't stop listening I was so hooked I devoured the book in a day!

Overall, I absolutely loved this book and i can't wait to read more in this world and from this author!!

5/5

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton, who gave me this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

City of Nightmares’ concept is very original - what if, when you fell asleep, there was a possibility that you transformed into your absolute worst nightmare?

The book follows Ness, a nineteen year old who is still haunted by the fact that her sister Ruby transformed a man-eating spider in her sleep and ate their father. She is a part of Friends of the Restful Soul, a religious organisation (*cough* cult *cough*) she stays with for the free rent. After she freaks out during an encounter with a Nightmare while on duty, she is given one last chance to stay with the Friends. She sneaks her way onto a courier assignment across the river - and the boat blows up. Her saviour? A vampire Nightmare named Cy, who she has to learn to trust despite all her instincts in order to get home - and stop herself being killed by assassins. This book is wild.

I’ll start with the things I liked.
- I liked Ness as a protagonist. It didn’t take me long to warm to her, because mostly because she’s pretty straight up. She’s a self-admitted coward who somehow manages to get herself into situations where she has to try and be brave. Her deadpan humour and overall done-ness with the world was fun to read. Fan of black comedy? You’ll love this girl.
- I liked reading about Ness’ relationships with other people. Her friendship with Priya was great, she is a good foil for Ness. I also liked how her friendship with Cy developed, it was realistic. There were also moments where Cy made me laugh - which doesn’t often happen when I read, I’ll admit - so I like him as a character in general.
- The setting was brilliant. The comparison to Gotham was on-point, especially when comparing Gotham’s set-up to dynamics of how Newham works - crooked politics, police bribery, desensitisation to crime, weird wacky monsters appearing out of nowhere. It reminded me a lot of the first season of the TV show, where there was a new horrifying monster for Jim Gordon to run after.
- There were some twists that I did not see coming, which I do appreciate in a book like this, that is meant to be a thriller.

What I didn’t like…
- There were moments were Ness or Cy would go on long tangents about different things, like the ethics of movies that romanticise abuse, which seemed a little…out of place? They would be speaking about something tangentially related and then it would become a monologue on ideals. Some of it was interesting and some of it raised valid points, but it took me out of the story. Ultimately, I don’t think it worked.
- The ending left me with a lot of questions about the whole “Nightmare” situation. I’m hoping that gets resolved in the sequel.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It’s weird, scary and fun. I think if you’re someone who liked the Gotham TV show in any way, you’ll love this.