Beautiful Nightmare: Some Dreams Become Your Reality by Ashley Marie Nestler

Long ago, the world suffered a terrible war, leaving behind only a select few hundred people. Believing that strong emotions fueled the war, those who survived created a town named Lunamoon, where each new human would be altered to be unable to feel emotion. 

They decide to choose only one man in each generation to be named the dream maker, and he would create dreams for everyone to tell them what their jobs and life outcomes would be.

The dream maker is able to live in solitude for the duration of his life, but the moment that the current dream maker is born, everything changes. Shawneleigh, a premature child was born with narcolepsy on the same day as the dream maker, lives on her own in the hospital. Through her sporadic sleeping spells and the connection they made at birth, she and the dream maker are able to connect through her dreams. They become friends, and then, fall in love.

Beautiful Nightmare is a tale of love and faith, showing how we can stand up for ourselves, while standing against those who want others to fail. For through it all, in the end, there is love.

First-time author, Ashley Marie Nestler, grew up in Westminster, Colorado. "I have lived right by the mountains all of my live, and the beauty really inspired me with this novel. 

Publisher's website: http://sbpra.com/AshleyMarieNestler

Review: 

I have to point this out before  I say anything about the book. I found this out shortly before I started reading it. This is the author's debut novel, and she wrote it during her senior year of high school. Let that sink in for a minute. Think about what you were doing during high school. In my case, I was a super boring honor's student, scared about graduating high school and going to college. I have always loved to read and have, on occasion, fantasized about writing a book someday. However, I couldn't imagine my 17 year old self sitting down, putting pen to paper and finishing a whole novel, much less having the courage to publish it myself. Needless to say, I was super impressed before I even read the first sentence.

Now on to the book: the story has an interesting and unique premise - the people of Lunamoon's brains are altered when they are born, removing their emotions. While this is a great concept, I think the follow through could have been better. It seemed like there were too many inconsistencies and contradictions, and things that didn't make much sense. For example, for people that are supposed to be devoid of emotions, they sure are prone to experiencing some pretty strong emotions, like jealousy, rage, and for some, love.

Also, I don't understand at all why a sex scene was included in this book. The world as they know it is turned upside down, and they sneak into an empty hospital-ish room for a quickie, when she wasn't even aware what kissing was earlier in the book? I thought that this was kind of tasteless and am not sure what the point was. This could be just me, though.

The ending of this book totally threw me for a loop. There were some aspects thrown in there that I didn't think really fit in with the rest of the story. I don't want to give away an spoilers, but the ending seemed like a completely different book. To me, it seems like too many different plot lines were popping up that didn't mesh with the rest of the story.

However, overall, I definitely respect the author for writing this book and putting it out there. If this is what she accomplished during her senior year in high school, I would definitely like to see what she can do later in life. Although this book wasn't my favorite, I would definitely read another book that she writes!

I received a copy of this book for free, in exchange for an honest review.