Young adult novels can be a treasure trove of awesome
characters, unique plotlines, and a few hours of good times. Of course young
adult novels can also be a breeding ground for crappy authors just looking for
their fifteen minutes of fame and a quick buck–we can all thank Stephenie Meyer
and her shit Twilight series for that!
Luckily for me, Blue is the Nightmares
was not just a Twilight copycat but a
young adult novel actually worth checking out!
Stacey Brown, a 16 year old Junior at Hillcrest Boarding School,
is a hereditary Wiccan through her grandmother. She wants to have a normal high
school experience, but things begin to crumble around her when she starts
having terrifying nightmares about the death of her best friend and roommate,
Drea. It is not the first time she's had these prophetic nightmares as, three
years ago, a girl she used to babysit was murdered. Stacey had ignored her
nightmares then, but now she’s having them again and, after the last time, she
knows they’ll come true.
The author of Blue is
for Nightmares (and the three novels that follow in the series) is Laurie
Faria Stolarz. Her work always features teenage protagonists and blend elements
of mystery and romance. The magical/Wiccan elements found in her books are
influenced by her home city: the one and only Salem
Massachusetts, known widely for the Salem witch trials of
1692.
The cast of characters in Blue is for Nightmares is a group of teenagers with a staple
stereotype from each group. There’s Amber the eccentric crazy one, PJ the
punkish class clown, Drea the diva, Stacey the regular girl next door, and Chad
the all American athlete. Each character fits a stereotype but each character
is also a human: they’re fleshed out and deeper than they appear at first
glance. Chad
is an athlete but is also an intellectual, Amber is strange but she’s
incredibly loyal, and Stacey–the main character of the piece–is a practicing
witch, having learned witchcraft (or Wicca if you prefer) from her grandmother,
and as it turns out, isn’t as normal as she appears. The story may take
advantage of the old teenage typecast standbys, but instead of becoming bogged
down in them, Stolarz puts them to good use as a solid foundation to build
upon.
The location of Blue
is for Nightmares takes place completely on the campus of an American
boarding school and I don’t know about the rest of you, but before this book,
I’d never read a book that took place at a boarding school. A rich private
school yes, but never a boarding school–it was a nice change on the
stereotypical teen high school drama (just like the characters). What makes the
boarding school so interesting a location is that the story must take place
within these confines. In the usual private school setting the students don’t
live there–they can come and go off campus as often as they like and when scary
shit happens on campus, they can go home and ‘be safe’ (even though we all know
that’s not how it works). When the scary shit happens on campus at a boarding
school though, you live there–you
can’t leave. It heightens the suspense and adds an extra level of danger to a
plot that–if it were happening anywhere else–would be a little hum-drum.
With a unique setting and great characters, Blue is for Nightmares is something
special compared to other young adult novels. The only thing I found myself not
liking were the conversations that happened between groups of the main
characters. They seemed like the sort of thing that adults think teenagers say
instead of things that they actually do–but that’s the case with almost all
novels about teenagers.
My final thoughts on Blue
is for Nightmares is that it’s pretty good. It’s not the best young adult
novel I’ve ever read, but it’s by no means the worst. It’s a young adult novel
that gives more than most of that genre do with characters that you think you
know, but don’t, a location that seems familiar, but is brand new, and a
plotline that’s a little bit supernatural, but is just real enough to be truly
creepy!
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