City of Nightmares by Rebecca Schaeffer
Published by Hachette UK
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Mental Health Representation, Monsters, Mythological Creatures, Nightmares, Vampires, Mental Health, Dark Fantasy, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, Supernatural, Alternative Universe
Series: City of Nightmares #1
My Rating:
Published on: 10th January 2023
Pages: 384
Disability Representation: Anxiety, PTSD, Trauma
Buy this Book! Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Blackwells / Bookshop.org US / Bookshop.org UK / Waterstones
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Face your fear . . . or become your nightmare.

Gotham meets Strange the Dreamer in this thrilling young adult fantasy about a cowardly girl who finds herself at the center of a criminal syndicate conspiracy, in a city where crooked politicians and sinister cults reign and dreaming means waking up as your worst nightmare.

Ever since her sister became a man-eating spider, Ness has been terrified of waking up as her own Nightmare. Because in the city that never sleeps, dreaming means becoming your worst fear.

Ness seeks protection with the Friends of the Restful Soul, which may or may not be a cult. To prove her worth, she accepts what is meant to be a simple job. Only for it to blow up in her face. Literally.

Ness and the only other survivor of the explosion - a Nightmare boy with an agenda of his own - must find their way back to the city and uncover the sinister truth behind the attack...

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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Please note that this review for City of Nightmares discusses the topic of abuse. The section of the review discussing this topic is hidden behind a spoiler tag, so it can be read or avoided as needed. If commenting on this topic, please put a trigger warning at the top of your comment. Thank you 🙂

When a book is described to me as Gotham meets, well, anything, I’m going to check it out, and from the cover to the synopsis, everything about City of Nightmares by Rebecca Schaeffer said it would be my kind of book. And it very much was. I can’t tell you how glad I am that this is book one of a series and not a standalone. Schaeffer has created a deliciously dark world where nightmares not only come to life, but people turn into their nightmares. From giant spiders to horrific monsters, to quite literally disappearing, manifestations of nightmares are a reality that people now have to contend with if they dream.

What I liked about the world Schaeffer has created is that while turning into a nightmare is permanent, and “monstrous”, not every nightmare is a non-sentient monster. Some can have reconstructive surgery, turning them into a humanoid-monster hybrid, while others become humanoid monsters such as vampires. This means you have a world filled with humans terrified of dreaming and becoming a nightmare, while living alongside the very thing they fear becoming.

City of Nightmares follows one such human, Ness, whose sister turned into a man-eating spider when she was a child. As a result, she has developed a phobia of nightmares that triggers such a strong anxiety reaction that she sleeps in a tiny room alone to avoid anyone turning into a nightmare, and runs back to hide in it when confronted with a nightmare, even if it’s miles away. Ness has been trying to work on her fear her entire life and feels like she’s failing constantly. She works for The Friends of the Restful Soul, an organisation that helps people whose lives have been affected by nightmares. The problem is that being able to handle the possibility of facing nightmares is needed to do many jobs there safely, so when the Director suggests to Ness that maybe their work isn’t for her, Ness starts to panic. Leaving The Friends of the Restful Soul would mean leaving her safe place for an overcrowded room in their busy city.

Panicking, Ness asks to do mail delivery for a week to reflect before the Director sends her to another branch. It’s that decision that throws Ness into a hornet’s nest of controversies, politics and scheming and a collision course with a boy who happens to be a nightmare. Cy is a vampire, a nightmare, whom Ness meets briefly on the boat while on her first mail delivery – just moments before it blows up. The only two survivors end up stuck together in multiple situations as they try to work out what caused the explosion and why someone cares so much that there were survivors…

I loved the world that Schaeffer has created in City of Nightmares. It’s dark, gritty, and so completely human. As someone who dreams very vividly every night, I appreciated the thought that went into the variety of nightmares and how they could be interpreted if someone physically became their nightmare. On the surface of this book, things appear to be very simple; the girl is terrified of nightmares, girl ends up stuck with a nightmare. It sounds tropey, and some of it is, but in City of Nightmares, Schaeffer goes a lot deeper than tropes. The darker edge of this novel and how it relates to the human psyche captured my attention just as much as the world-building.

Ness’s anxiety was very well written, as were her thoughts about how it made her feel not to be able to fight it. Her frustration at struggling with her mental health, at responding to her triggers and finding herself in the same position over and over, was very familiar. As were reactions to her fear from others who didn’t understand it and just expected her to get over it. Ness isn’t necessarily a good person, especially when her anxiety is in full swing, and I liked that Schaeffer showed that side of anxiety. Many people think that being anxious just means you’re going to run away and cry, but when an extremely anxious person’s safe place is at risk, they will do anything to keep it. Such as hurting someone’s foot so that they can steal their job.

I’ve seen some criticism about Ness’ personality and about some of the dialogue between Cy and Ness sounding forced, and honestly, it didn’t feel forced to me. Ness isn’t a heroine; she’s not your normal protagonist. She’s odd, she’s not quite sure where she fits in the world, and she is extremely socially awkward. She literally has one friend and a handful of people she interacts with regularly. Her world has been very small, and through meeting Cy, it begins to open up.

The character development of Ness and all the characters throughout the book felt natural, and the book was well-paced. City of Nightmares is not an easy read and deals with a lot of dark topics, so please take the time to check the content warnings. It was one that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I’m looking forward to seeing where book two takes us.

About Rebecca Schaeffer

RR/Rebecca Schaeffer is the critically acclaimed author of Not Even Bones and its sequels, the Webtoon adaption of which has garnered over a hundred million reads and nearly 2 million subscribers. Her City of Nightmares duology was one of the BBC’s most anticipated books of 2023, and one of Kirkus’s best books of 2023. Episodes of her comic Dead But Not Gone air weekly on Webtoon and her next book, A Fable for Hollow Creatures, comes out in fall 2026 from Ace.

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Thank you for reading my review for City of Nightmares by Rebecca Schaeffer. Some of my views in this review you be controversial, and I ask that you respect my personal experience before considering commenting.

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