“City of Nightmares” offers a unique and “different” concept – can you imagine living in a dark and bleak city/world, and the very real possibility that you can turn into your own worst nightmare?

The worldbuilding is brilliant, and although most of the book blurbs does note it to be as “Gotham-inspired”, I would have surmised that from the writing as well. Thinking back, while listening to this audio book, I never visualised it it to occur somewhere where it’s sunny and bright, with green pastures that stretches on for days. It is dark, quirky and atmospheric, very much like the plot.

Ness, the protagonist is by her own admission is a bit of a coward and is riddled with fear and anxiety. She’s not strong, brave or fierce, she simply wants to survive and make it to the next day. So not what we’re used to seeing as the central character in fantasy YA books – and I like it! She is haunted by trauma and nightmares, an orphan with nowhere to go. The only people she can rely on is her best friend, and the Friends of the Restful Soul, an organisation she found a home at after the death of her family. Or can she?

She’s got an interesting “support cast” and we also get introduced to an impressive range of monsters, ghouls, and nightmare creatures.

“City of Nightmares” is face-paced, showcasing a fantasy world that is corrupt, and filled with conspiracies and vivid nightmares. There are morally grey characters (including our cowardly protagonist), sinister villains and dark motives. And you ask the question: “Who are the real monsters?”

What I enjoyed most:
Vampire alert!
Unlikely allies
Unique concept
Face-paced
Dark wit

There is some repetitiveness in the writing and maybe it could do with more editing, but in general this was a great start to the duology! I definitely now want to read more from the author, so I started the WEBTOON series “Not Even Bones”.

I had to opportunity to listen to the audiobook ARC, courtesy of NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton. It was narrated by Saskia Maarleveld. She did a brilliant job, keeping up with the pace of the story, getting into the various characters and making this an entertaining and effortless listening experience.
#CityofNightmares #NetGalley

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult (YA), Horror

“City of Nightmares” releases on 10 January 2023. I hope we get it here in South Africa as well, I’d love to get my hands on the hard copy to add to my bookshelf whilst waiting for the second book!

City of Nightmares by Rebecca Schaeffer (3 stars)

‘In a Gotham-inspired city where people go to sleep and wake up as their own nightmares, perfectly normal, perfectly terrified Ness must face her biggest fears, before she ends up a casualty in some else's villainous war.’

This was a fascinating concept for a book: imagine a world where you must sleep but every dream is laced with the fear that you will wake up as a completely different creature, warped into your worst nightmare. The worldbuilding does a decent job of expanding this idea and explaining the different caveats - for example, that some people turn into nightmares and then have to be immediately taken out because they go on a killing spree, whereas some turn into nightmares and can still function in their everyday lives. The narrator Ness is terrified of nightmares because her sister turned into a spider more akin to the first category, killed after eating their father. Ness works and lives with the Friends of the Restful Soul, a culty organisation led by a nightmare turned lizard director. Just trying to survive in the terrifying nightmare-ridden city where she lives, Ness unintentionally gets drawn into a mystery involving a vampire, assassins, and a city-wide conspiracy.

This was an engaging story to listen to, particularly on audiobook. I enjoyed the diverse range of characters, particularly the way that every character was given a full description which included their skin colour - regardless of what that skin colour was. Ness’ fear was well described, given a vivid idea of how debilitating fear can be and how her trauma manifested. Vampires and other nightmares are used in a somewhat clever way to mirror sexual assault and the dark side of Hollywood, and sex work is also discussed in a nuanced way. Fear is used as a big theme in a convincing way, and the character growth was realistic - Ness doesn’t go from being a coward to being a superhero overnight.

However, although I did really enjoy this story and the characters within, there were some flaws to this book. It could’ve been half the length as there was so much repetition. The author writes as if they are worried you might be about to forget key facts, and so events are repeated three times in slightly different words or key pieces of information are mentioned in every chapter. The moral posturing was also a bit overdone, again as if the author thought their ideas were too complicated for the reader to process, and so this can become a bit ham-fisted at times. Told not shown is a recurring theme. There were also some gaps in the worldbuilding which made some of the twists a tad unbelievable, but I’m hoping the second book handles this (a book I will be reading!).

A very weird and different book that I would definitely recommend! Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for the ARC of the audiobook!

“Just like I made myself into a coward, I can make myself brave too.”

City of nightmares was such a unique concept and so well executed. I really enjoyed everything. It was the perfect balance of character development and world building. I think anyone who has ever experienced anxiety or panic disorder will really resonate with Ness and who doesn’t want a handsome vampire companion

This book has everything that is great about fantasy books. Set in a city where nightmares can become real and the real monsters aren’t always who you think. We meet our main character who has joined a cult but doesn’t realise it is. All she wants is to have a safe place away from the nightmares. She manages to get herself onboard a ship and tries to save a girl from a vampire but the ship blows up leading to a quest to find out who wanted all those people to die.
This book has twists and turns with unexpected villains and some great characters. This looks set to be a good series.

3.5 Stars
This book was weird and I LOVE weird books. A corrupt city and people transforming into nightmares? Yes, please.

We follow Ness who lives with a group (cult) that offers support for people who have gone through nightmare attacks. Ness just wants a safe space to live because she is terrified of everything and everyone after her sister turned into a nightmare when she was young. Now Ness is caught up in an event that leads her to face her fears and find answers with the unlikeliest of allies.

This book was so fun to read I was constantly going wtf. I enjoyed following Ness as a character as she is not a hero or morally good, she feels very real. The only issue I had was that the pacing felt off sometimes and it was a tad repetitive but nothing that hampered my enjoyment.

Overall I highly recommend reading this book if you are looking for a weird good time.

This was my first audiobook of the year and what a great way to start!

The plot itself instantly gripped me, a dark and criminal city filled with plots and secrets and people turned into their own nightmares 🤷🏻‍♀️ throw in a girl who's afraid of literally everything falling accidentally into the middle of drama? A fantastic premise!

I thought the story was brilliant, the world was dark and seedy and I really enjoyed it, the characters were likeable and relatable and gelled well together. I love Ness' growth throughout the book — so many books we have our MC swaggering around thinking they're better than everyone and running headfirst into danger. Ness openly embraces her cowardice, and will happily run the other way. Her growth is believable though, and even then she doesn't suddenly become the big all, she just learns to survive. I really liked it.

Her last chapter was *chefs kiss*

This was my first read of Schaeffer's — her other series has been on my tbr a while, and now I'm even more keen to get to it!

The audio was very well narrated also, couldn't fault it a bit. I was carried through the story easily, and just didn't want to stop!

I'll start this by saying that I LOVED Rebecca Schaeffer's previous series Market of Monsters. It was truly a dark and messed up YA series that was unlike anything else I'd ever read. Following that up would be a tough task for anyone, but City of Nightmares mostly achieves that and is an exciting new release.

Set in a Gotham-like city, this series is full of monsters and corruption. Residents have to take pills in order to prevent themselves from turning into Nightmares - whatever is the last thing that they would want to be. Ness, the protagonist, has had her life torn apart by a Nightmare and is now terrified by the prospect of turning into one or encountering one. During her work on behalf of the cult she is a part of (which she joined for food and shelter), she is caught up in an assassination attempt and survives with the help of a Nightmare. The rest of the book follows how she deals with the shift in everything she knows, and whether she can balance her fear of Nightmares with her want to be alive and search for the truth.

As always with Rebecca Schaeffer books, sometimes people are worse than monsters. And sometimes people turn into spiders and kill their family.

Ness is a pretty interesting protagonist and different to most female protagonists in fantasy type YA books. She's not brave, she doesn't want what's happening to her, and she doesn't trust anything around her. The book is well-paced and balances plot with character interactions and development. With this series being a duology, it'll be interesting to see how this is wrapped up in the final instalment later this year. I'm looking forward to more shenanigans involving Ness and Cy.

An upbeat, quirky modern fantasy brought down by poor writing and plot development. If you can overlook its flaws, CITY OF NIGHTMARES is a light-hearted fantasy thrill ride.

This book was absolutely not what I was expecting, not in a good way – and yet I still had a lot of fun reading this.

The covers made me think this was a semi-serious adult fantasy, but instead this is a light-hearted YA sci-fantasy thriller. The voice is fast-paced, energetic 1POV from the book's sassy main character, the cowardly nineteen-year-old Ness Near. You do wonder why or how you could root for a character who exploits others in for selfish gain, and who therefore doesn't have a purpose in life other than to survive – but then, Ness also deliberately threatens to break someone's ankle to get her way, so I didn't really get a true cowardly feel from her, which only muddied the messages of bravery this book was trying to push.

Because of this, Ness doesn't push CITY OF NIGHTMARES’ plot. Things happen to her and most of the book is her reacting to them; she stumbles upon most answers to her questions by sheer coincidence, rather than any active seeking on her part. However, she is still somehow a fun character to follow, and has a great dynamic with her peers, like Cy and her best friend Priya. There's an eclectic side cast as well, given the book's fundamental focus on Nightmarish aspects – there are lizards and living blobs and wolves and phantoms. The premise is totally absurd and book rolls with it anyway.

The plot did leave a lot to be desired as well, for aforementioned no-agency Ness, but also because a lot of factors of plot movement hinged on coincidences, and all the good twists are given to random, one-note side characters. The book also goes on many unnecessary and sometimes incoherent tangents that feel like padding.

Without a doubt, however, the poorest aspect of the book was the repetitive, juvenile writing. I absolutely did not get 'established author' vibes from Schaeffer's prose, who has her characters repeatedly grin, blink, and shrug with little variation on almost every page. It’s even more noticeable because the body language quirks are always in-between dialogue exchanges, turning what should be short conversations into several pages.

Having said all that, the audiobook is what made this read much more enjoyable. Saskia Maarleveld’s upbeat narration gave the characters a more organic flair and made the choppy dialogue exchanges more bearable.

CITY OF NIGHTMARES is flawed, BUT when you manage to overlook the flaws, you can enjoy this exactly for what it is trying to be: a solid YA sci-fantasy ride of thrills and black humour. Genuinely, if they redid the covers to be more tonally appropriate and ran this through another edit to get rid of the repetitions, the book would benefit massively.

WILL I READ ON? Maybe.

My first read of the new year and things are already starting off well! City of Nightmare creates an incredibly grim, despicable world and a protagonist who is having NONE of it, thank you very much, but now in the way you would think. I love that Ness is a self-described coward, just trying to survive in a horrible place. But more than that, I loved watching her grow out of it. I also think the way that Schaeffer describes friendship is absolutely stunning (and I’m seriously hoping that, in the sequels, some of the friendships verge even further into romance). This was a delightful book with lovely characters.

I think this is on the lower 4/3.5 stars!
When i heard the premise of this book and that it was based in a city that is described as a dark Gotham with vampires and other nightmares, i was immediately sold on the idea (Gotham is a fave tv series for me)

The book didnt disappoint on the Gotham vibes.
I liked the characters alot but wanted more. The book felt like an opening chapter to a much bigger book concept so everything for me felt like just a teaser and made me ask more questions than it actually answered.

I think my preferences have definitely started to learn towards Adult audiences which may be why i felt it lacked ever so slightly, BUT this dark world and story would have benefitted far more is it were to be written for an older/ darker audience!

Over all i did really enjoy it and binged it within a day! The Audio book is really great, pacing and narrator are on point for me!

Thanks to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for providing me with the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the audio version of this fun, fast paced, fantasy mystery thriller. Written for YA, will be enjoyed by all mature readers. This is the first in a series, but can be enjoyed as a stand alone book. Ness grew up in a city where dreams turn people into monsters. She has a past that would make anyone cowardly. Run and hide when confronted is her internal philosophy. But Ness is going to find out that many of the real monsters don’t look like a monster at all, and that we are all the people that we let ourselves be. Thank you to Hodder and Stoughton Audubon and NetGalley for the audio ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

I found this book quite strange if I am honest but what I thought was good was the very unique premise and the amazing fantasy world. I also liked the main character and often found myself warming to her as I felt she was honest and raw. This suits a young adult reader as described and is a fantasy novel.

This is completely original, dark and quite honestly a mad ride! The story is set in this dark city where violence and corruption is an everyday occurrence but you also have the added bonus of people turning into their nightmares, if they don’t take care! Our main character Ness had experienced her sister turning into a giant man eating spider which traumatised Ness forever. This is such a quirky book and the audiobook was brilliant. A real adventure

This book is based in a corrupt world where you can literally be turned into your own nightmare, and the struggles of the main character in that reality. This book was an incredibly unique concept, and described anxiety so well you could imagine what they were feeling. I really enjoyed the suspense and the number of sinister mysteries that were being brought to light as the book developed. I would recommend this one for anybody looking for a young adult thriller in a Gothamesque reality.

Ness lives in a place where your worst nightmare can literally come to pass just as you sleep.

Because of this, Ness is permanently frightened, a self-confessed coward, and as this can happen to anyone at any point, I really can't blame her at all!

A routine trip for the Friends of the Restful Soul (it's not a cult!) turns Ness life upside down and makes her question everything, including herself.

I'm here again to toot my horn for the main man! Sometimes I think why am I like this? Why do I fall for every leading man?! But then I shrug and carry on loving them! Vampire, Cy stole my heart. He was everything. I love him!

This was a really great read. A bit dark, a bit weird, totally original and fabulously written. Now I need a physical copy because I'm in love with that cover!

I absolutely loved this book. I went in a little hyped up, and at first wasn't so sure about it. I paused and took a couple of days to sort myself out mentally, came back and absolutely devoured it. I can't wait to own a physical copy of this book!

I gave it 4.5/5 stars!

This was fun. A little bit darker than the average YA book, and that's a good thing. The plot is set in a world where you turn into your worst nightmare. Literally. Yikes.

The main character is Ness. She isn't particularly brave, she's not a fighter, and she's definitely not the person you'd choose to save anyone (you'd go with her friend Priya instead - she's quite the badass). I kind of liked her anyways, especially since she went through quite a lot of character development.

Occasionally there were passages that clearly were the author stating her own opinions via the characters (e.g. on monogamy and romance), and while I don't generally have an issue with authors doing that, it felt forced here. The statements weren't even questioned by Ness, they were simply accepted as true.

Overall City of Nightmares was a fun read, but it didn't quite live up to it's potential.

City of Nightmares was a strong kick to start an interesting series. First of all this story grabbed my interest with take setting at chaotic dark city which brimming with corruption, criminality and... monsters. With combination vibes between Gotham city and wicked Bacanno premises, I wish extra development in the future for this promising world building.

The author doing her magic with choosed unusual character as her FML. Ness isn't famous from her fighting skills or bravery but from her amazing auto fast reaction to running away and save her self during dangerous situation. She is a coward and basicly will become last pick for badass heroine candidate. But seeing her undertone characteristic growing stronger during this book become one of my proud happy moment. I saw diversity from all characters are well respected, their interaction looks natural, and their banter always funny dan witty.

I love the storytelling style, it is smooth and easy to follow. Enjoyable plot and twist but I still feel some of lack explaination expecially about The Nightmare itself. Actually it was my Hallowen treat, quick to read, really captiving and succeeded feed my darker reading appetite. Looking forward to the second book!!

I got opportunity into the audiobooks version and it is elevated the enjoyment. The narrator did wonderful effort to make different voices for each characters. Her pronounced still clear and enjoyed even with faster mode. Her voice little bit sound older for Ness but the vibe is suited eerie atmosphere in this worldbuilding.

Thank you Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley for provided my copy. Really appreciate and my thoughts are my own.