Nightmare by Joan Lowery Nixon

When I read the book Nightmare by Joan Lowery Nixon over the summer, I was immediately hooked and couldn’t put the book down. The mystery novel Nightmare is a suspenseful and unpredictable, story that combines dreams, or nightmares, with reality. There was excitement and suspense from the first page to the last. Emily Wood, the main character, is an under achiever, or at least it seems that way compared to her straight A siblings. As a result, Emily was sent into a summer camp called Camp Excel: a summer camp for under achievers. Ever since Emily Wood, was a little girl she had one disturbing reoccurring nightmare. Every night when she slept, she saw a dead woman in a lake, then a sudden flash of light appears out of nowhere and as she ran away with terror, she heard a voice screaming for her; telling her that he’ll find her one day, but she thought if she never told anyone about it, it would go away, she was wrong. Emily’s roommate, Hayley made her pick rune stones -stones that suppose ably tell your fortune of that day- and after Emily keeps getting the stone that means that means she’s in danger. Emily begins to worry about if she is going to get murdered this summer, and if the nightmare had anything to do with it. Instead of Camp Excel being a struggle to learn, it becomes a struggle to survive. From then on, one of Emily’s friends was always by her side, hoping to scare of whoever is plotting against her.

The author’s writing style very interesting and dramatic. Every other chapter, Nixon changed from the perspective of the protagonist, Emily, to the antagonist. This made the book very suspenseful because the antagonist remained anonymous until the end of the book, and you go to see what the antagonist was planning and thinking while the book went on. The author also used a lot of literary devices, such as foil characters (to make the book more interesting), mood (to set the book in a mysterious tone), point of view (so you can know the characters inside feelings), and, of course conflict to make the book very engaging.

Another quality that makes this book amazing is that it also had a meaningful message, which is if something is bothering you, you shouldn’t leave it bottled up inside, but you should tell someone about it. Emily didn’t tell anyone about her nightmare, and that got her into a lot of trouble and a very dangerous situation. I would defiantly recommend this book to the class because it was one of my favorite books, and if anyone enjoyed it as much as me, than it will be one of theirs also.