The Nightmarys
Dan Poblocki

Random House Books for Young Readers
August 24, 2010/ ISBN 037584256X
Children Ages 9-12 / Horror
Amazon

Reviewed by Jan Fields

The Nightmarys starts as all good horror stories should, with events so scary they make you hold your breath as you read because you don't yet know which characters just might be expendable. Timothy July's life is taking a slight shift, a nudge to the left where things happen that aren't quite weird enough to be impossible but more than weird enough to be disquieting. He can't talk about what he's seeing, not even to Abigail who is haunted by problems of her own. Still, before the story is done, these two totally different young people will have to team up to put a stop to a curse that hungers to claim a human soul. Dan Poblocki says the title for the book and the story idea came from a dream of girls in white who stared at him in a skin-creeping way as he slept. Then he later saw a photo that looked entirely too much like the girls of his dreams, so he had to bring these nightmare girls -- these nightmarys -- to lift the plague of the dreams of Abigail and attempt to lure her to the worst kind of death. This book is for kids who can handle scary because this is no Ghostbumps romp through silly spooks, this book definitely slips up your spine and makes you nervous about turning out the light. It's exactly the book I would have adored as a kid. For me, the best books were the ones who visited you again after the lights were out and made you question every shadow in the darkness -- Nightmarys is just that kind of book. Although the book had a few moments that didn't quite work for me, I never once felt the urge to set it down. The sense of creepy pervades the text and never completely lets you relax and tell yourself it's just a story. Plus, the characters of Timothy and Abigail were so well drawn, that you couldn't help but worry about them as they struggle through a world turned nightmarish.

Reviewer's Note: