A Better Nightmare - by Megan Freeman (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Emily Emerson is finally a senior at the Wildsmoor Facility. Here, the students live each day as shadows, one day blurring into the next while the symptoms of the Grimm-Cross Syndrome are trained out of them. For Emily, the Grimm means strange dreams and hallucinations that can be set free into the world. It was beautiful until it turned evil. Now she'll do anything to get better and get back to her life. She'll be more quiet and obedient than everyone else. But when Emily is introduced to the Cure, a secret society for kids who believe that the Grimm isn't a disease, but a gift, she begins to see her strange abilities in a new light. And she begins to notice people she hasn't noticed before . . . Emir isn't like the other kids at Wildsmoor. He says things that he shouldn't--dangerous things. He is electric in more ways than one. Until now, Emily's world has been about rules, order, and repetition. But all of that is about to change"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

If the entire world believes in a lie, does that make it the truth?

A dark and absorbing allegory for the power that young people possess in their bones to change things that feel far bigger than them, A Better Nightmare is a whirlwind adventure -- a story of friendship, romance, and a radical crusade for one group of teens to fight for their right to feel.

Emily Emerson is nearly sixteen, finally a senior at the Wildsmoor Facility. But so is Meera, isn't she? Meera, who is nineteen and has been a senior for as long as Emily can remember? Here, the students live each day as shadows, one day blurring into the next, hardly aware of life passing them by while the symptoms of the Grimm Cross Syndrome that afflicts them all is trained out of them. Rules. Order. Repetition. Medication.

Emily was eight when she started showing signs of the disease. Odd dreams, hallucinations - impossible things that happened around her. Unconscious thoughts that could be set free into the world--flowers that covered the house, thick like a forest and sowed with nothing more than her unconscious thoughts. It was beautiful until it turned evil, when Emily did her first bad thing and found herself here. Now, she'll do anything to get better and get back to her life. She'll be more quiet and obedient than everyone else.

Until she meets Emir.

Emir isn't like the other kids at Wildsmoor. He's quicker and livelier. He says things that he shouldn't - dangerous things. Emir is electric, magnetic in more ways than Emily can know.

When Emir introduces her to The Cure, a secret society for kids who believe that The Grimm isn't a disease at all, but a gift, Emily starts to wake up, and so do her strange abilities. The outcome is a dream come true. But sometimes the best dreams and the worst nightmares have the same people in them.

About the Author

Megan Freeman writes young adult fiction and loves all things magic and mythology. She juggles writing with her day job working for a children's mental health charity, promoting wellbeing through surf therapy. Megan hails from the far west of Cornwall, and when she's not working or writing, loves tramping around the moorland and swimming or surfing in the sea.