Beautiful Nightmare by Ashley Marie Nestler - 5/5
~*~ “No one is ever truly lost. All you have to do is stop looking and let them find their own way home.” - Ashley Marie Nestler, Beautiful Nightmare ~*~ What better way to spend a gloomy, lazy Sunday afternoon than by reading an indie author’s debut novel? Beautiful Nightmare: Some Dreams Become Your Reality is truly a stunning piece of work. Fans of science fiction and dystopia will enjoy the world of Lunamoon and find themselves pondering the dreary world that is reminiscent of Lois Lowry’s “The Giver”. The world building in this story was tremendous. As the sky was rather gloomy out today (and often is in the Pacific NW) I found myself thinking about what it would be like to live in a place without seasons, and then I found myself thinking about the story’s heroine, Shawneleigh, and how depressing her life must seem. This story focuses around Shawneleigh, who was born too early and struck with narcolepsy. Being considered a lower class citizen due to her illness, Shawneleigh spends her days with her doting caretaker, Jordan, stuck at the hospital while various pointless tests and experiments are run on her that are said to help her, but which have done more harm than good thus far. August, Lunamoon’s dream maker, was born on the same day as Shawneleigh, and it is explained that the two are bound together because their souls have traveled the same path around the stars, and the minute amount of contact that they make as newborns solidifies this factor. August’s life is a different sort of prison than Shawneleigh’s. He lives beyond the city limits in a place where he can experience the seasons and is given the important job of creating dreams for the citizens of Lunamoon in the hopes that they will stay appeased and in the positions that their dreams tell them to stay in. This would seem far more appealing than life in the city, but August is confined in solitude, with no friends or family with which to spend his days. One day, Shawneleigh has an episode and falls asleep only to meet August in a snowy forest. She’s never seen snow before, and she’s never been so immediately attracted to another human being before. August shows her small pleasures, like hot chocolate and snow globes and how dreams are made, and the two become irrevocably bound. Unfortunately, this bond creates trouble when August is no longer able to separate his dream making from his memories and the people of Lunamoon awaken to experiences that have long since been forbidden and forgotten. The cast of characters in this story is lovely. I enjoyed the different points of view and the various relationships between characters. The villain surprised me, and I was happy to be given a backstory as explanation for why they turned out the way they did. There were also some really interesting side characters that gave the story volume and added spark. The pacing was also rather good. At first, I was struck by how quickly the main characters bonded, but then I had to remind myself that they’d been bonded since before they were born, and it all made sense. The writing was elegant and fit with the world perfectly. Every word seemed very carefully chosen, and I enjoyed that about this book. Finally, the cover art was spectacular. It fit the story perfectly and gave us a beautiful dream-like portrait of Shawneleigh to help with visuals. Simply gorgeous.
