I was kindly gifted an ARC of Sweet Nightmare by Entangled Publishing and thoroughly enjoyed this quite frankly intense story!

I've never ready anything by Tracy Wolff before this and didn't know beforehand that it is based in the same universe as the Crave series. Not to worry, though, as I didn't feel like I was missing anything by coming in blind.

Sweet Nightmare is written from the perspective of Clementine, a manticore whose family runs the Calder Academy. The Academy houses all kinds of paranormal creatures from Sirens to Phoenix to Fae and more who have been sent away for abusing their powers in the outside world.

Clementine has never been off the island so she's never had access to her powers, as the island blocks all the students' access to them. This is supposedly for the best, but when an insanely ferocious hurricane powers through and the students regain their powers and nightmarish monsters on campus get loose, it's a nightmare all its own for everyone to try to find their way to safety.

In my opinion, there is one flaw in the story that would bring me out of the flow at times, which was that it often seemed difficult to believe that the storm was raging as intensely as written during such a significant part of the story yet so many scenes seemed to play out as though the storm was taking breaks as the plot desired. But overall, the story was incredibly intriguing and while I don't traditionally read such detailed fantasy, I'll certainly be looking forward to more of Clementines story!

Sweet Nightmare is the first book in The Calder Academy series and I did enjoy it quite a bit. However, there were pacing issues galore and the character development was almost non-existent. The premise of this book sounded quite interesting and I was looking forward to the journey and the reveals, but a lot of it felt rushed, included a lot of random stuff that may or may not be explained at a later time, and I just couldn't get into the romance as the backstory for their lust just wasn't explained all that well.

To be fair, I did enjoy the characters but that's because I was fascinated by the monster aspect of their personalities and how quickly they could switch from being nice people to these terrifying monsters, especially since they couldn't control their powers when they switched or when their power came back to them. But aside from this, the characters are not that developed at all. You have your typical FMC who does not get a break and needs to be rescued by the big, hulking, muscly, powerful MMC. Too many tropes there for me to unpack and not ones that I necessarily like either. The relationship between Clementine and Jude is rushed and because the author doesn't give us a lot of backstory to explain their chemistry other than they were best friends for ten years, it's hard to really get the feels for their relationship. Yes, there are some flashbacks and some explanations, but they are rushed and you don't really have a chance to absorb them because the action is non-stop and you are whirled into another problem. I rolled my eyes quite a few times. I think I enjoyed the secondary characters more than the main characters.

If you like plot-driven books, then this one should definitely be on your radar. The characters are thrown into one situation after another, with little time to breathe, and this gives little time for character development and leaves a lot of room for plot holes that are easily glossed over. Personally, it didn't really flow all that well and felt quite chaotic. There were some aspects to the story I really enjoyed however, and I love secrets and mysteries of which there were plenty.

What I did really love though, was the setting. The mysterious island, the academy, the secrets, the monsters, and the atmosphere are always things that I enjoy in novels and this one had it all.

Verdict
Sweet Nightmare had quite a bit of potential, but too much focus on the plot didn't allow much room for character development, and I need to feel something when I am reading. Characters die, there's a lot of fighting that happens, so I should have felt more than just...disappointment. The author did manage to pick up some looser threads towards the last quarter of the book and weave them back into the story, and there were a few twists and turns I wasn't expecting, but there was still a lot of stuff that was glossed over and didn't make sense. Overall, I did think the story was promising and I will be reading the next book when it releases next year. ( )

Mix a tall cocktail of suspension of belief, block out half a dozen hours, open this book, and be prepared to have your toes curl while you're entertained. ( )