Sweet Nightmare (The Calder Academy, #1)
Tracy Wolff
The scariest school on earth Is about to experience real fear… Most schools are about being the best. This school? It’s about being the worst. Calder Academy is where the rogue paranormals go. The ones who break the rules or lose control. And when that happens for vamps, werewolves, witches, and dark fae? It gets pretty freaking scary. I should know. Because I’m trapped here. Look, every seventeen-year-old girl thinks their mom is a tyrant. But mine just happens to run Calder Academy, which paints a giant target on my back. The way I make it through these dark halls is by steering clear of the things―and kids―who go bump in the night. Especially Jude Abernathy-Lee. But when a freak storm hits our isolated island, I'm stuck without a backup plan. The power is gone. The lights are out. And our worst nightmares are suddenly real―and out for blood. Now the only way to survive is to align myself with one evil to avoid the other. And the only thing worse than the idea of getting close to Jude? Secretly loving every minute of it.
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2024 reads: 148/250
as the daughter of the headmistress, clementine has been at calder academy her whole life. this school is for rogue paranormals to learn control. when a storm hits the isolated island that houses calder academy, all hell breaks loose, including students’ worst nightmares.
honestly, this was a case of “curiosity got the best of me.” i saw an ad for this book that described it as “harry potter meets five nights at freddy’s,” saw my library had the audiobook, and now here we are. the rest of my review will contain spoilers.
while reading this, i couldn’t help but think that it felt like the author tried to squeeze in every ya fantasy cliché she could. so, i decided to look up “ya fantasy clichés” just to see how many boxes this one checked. here’s what i got:
☑tortured boy x good girl
☑“i love you but i’m bad for you so this can’t work”
☑finding out your parents lied to you your whole life
☑if the mc’s parents are alive, they’re lying to the mc and holding her back from realizing her dreams
☑oh no! the love interest has a questionable past!
☑love interest has stupid nicknames for the mc
☑somehow going from not knowing about your powers to mastering them in a stupidly short amount of time???
☑incessant pop culture references (even though it makes no sense that the characters would know them?)
i started making this list 2/3 in, and didn’t continue it after, so this is not all-inclusive.
now, i’m not saying including any or all of these elements makes a book unenjoyable. however, it just didn’t work in this book. i feel like people definitely could have picked this up in 2012 and eaten it up, though. i have enjoyed a book by tracy wolff in the past, so i’d be willing to give her books another try. unfortunately, while i didn’t hate this one, it just wasn’t for me.
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