The Nightmare Thief
Nicole Lesperance
Another magical realism book by Nicole Lesperance, this time full of the quirky charm and appeal for the middle grade audience. When I first stumbled across this title, it was actually thanks to spotting its sequel in some middle grade lists as I start working back through the year to find any titles that may have slipped through my radar to order — and I was so glad I found it!
This first novel does an excellent job creating a world that functions close to our own, but with magical abilities that are treated as the mundane. Maren comes from a long line of dream shapers. Women in her family have the ability to blend materials into different kind of nocturnal experiences for the partaker — everything from dreams of flying to nightmares (and those come with extreme warnings and even “training wheels” nightmares to start with).
There is one rule above all others in the Dream Shop — you may only purchase and use dreams for yourself. If you give them to someone else without their consent, you are banned from the shop permanently. That always seemed like a sensible rule to Maren, but when her sister falls into a coma after a car accident Maren can’t help but think that maybe some positive dreams will help her sister come back. Unfortunately for her, a shadowy woman sees Maren give her sister the dream and demands Maren acquire nightmares for her or she will expose her crime to the very family she looks up to the most — and the owner of the shop — her grandmother.
I love a good blackmail story, and while The Nightmare Thief could have gone full horror, Lesperance deftly kept things accessible for wider audiences by limiting imagery exposures. There’s still spiders and shadows and hallucinations, not to mention terrible visions in the night, but they’re manageable. Maren is likeable, especially because she’s doing the wrong things for the right reasons, and to see her tussle with karma is especially engaging. She is also surprisingly self sufficient, and I enjoyed seeing her have such autonomy and will power, even more so when it was challenged.
There are, of course, the other typical themes you’d expect to find in middle grade books, friendship dynamics changing, people changing socially, standing up for yourself– but the grief aspect is one I don’t find done to this degree so much. I hate to call it a specialty of Lesperance’s, but she writes it so well (The Wide Starlight being another example). Grief, medical drama/debt, stress while all-consuming and often alienating, isn’t inherently an isolating thing, and seeing Maren and her family cope with it in their own ways are likely to be some of the more relatable moments in the book.
The villain in this novel is easy to identify and understand up to a point, but does come off as a bit farcical regarding her aspirations thanks to the limits of her abilities. Her innate desire for power at any cost is tested, and I was pleasantly surprised at the lengths she actively planned and took to achieve her goals. Due to her nature, tension and suspense elements were at play, especially towards the end and I’d love to see another book where Lesperance leans into those qualities more — maybe for an older audience.
I hate to admit since the rest of this review is practically glowing, but I was let down by the ending. There was little ambiguity to things, almost a clear on-the-nose “here is the moral” moment, and the sense of closure I got felt juvenile in its application. Up until that moment, things had landed squarely in the middle grade category for me, and I think the ending might annoy older readers for its neatness.
Overall, a worthwhile read for anyone looking to incorporate a little imagination and dark whimsy into their reading, and definitely appropriate and relevant for 4th grade and up. As my middle grade reading expands, I hope to find other books that satisfy a similar itch — though The Candymakers comes to mind.
The Little Book Witch 