Review Detail

When most people have recurring nightmares, the worst that happens is they lose a few nights' sleep. When Stacey Brown has them, people end up dead! Laurie Faria Stolarz's Blue is for Nightmares tetralogy follows hereditary witch Stacey from junior year in high school to freshman year in college, as she must repeatedly decipher her terrifying dreams to protect the lives of the people she loves.

It's a great testament to Stolarz's storytelling abilities that her universe seems like a nice place to live despite the danger posed by a disproportionate number of psycho stalker-types. Stacey's prep school and university are populated by likeable and believable characters: friends are supportive when it counts though their patience is not without limits; boyfriends are charming but also flawed, as teenage boys are; even enemies are something more than caricatured monsters of evil. Stacey herself is a sympathetic narrator and her serious and respectful attitude toward the magic she practices is a credit to her. The novels read like movies: fast-paced, suspenseful, no unnecessary characters or dialogue cluttering up the plot--any fan of Scream or I Know What you Did Last Summer will enjoy this collection. Stolarz does a good job of painting all the characters as potential suspects: readers will have a hard time guessing the endings of the first three novels. The fourth, Red is for Remembrance, though the least suspenseful, is the best, because it branches out from the original format and opens the series to new possibilities. Fans of the Blue is for Nightmares books will be eager to see where Stolarz will take Stacey and her friends next.

Note: This box set includes an attractively designed spellbook containing 12 spells extracted from the four novels.