Changes

After her parents' deaths at the hands of the demons they fought against, Sarah Midnight was left reeling again by the revelation towards the end of book 1 that her 'cousin' Harry Midnight was actually Harry's friend Sean Hannay. Unable to trust Sean following his lies, Sarah turns to Nicholas, new on the scene. But Nicholas has dark secrets of his own - has Sarah placed her faith in the wrong person? And will she find out the truth about the Midnight legacy before the demons attack again?

It’s also got my favourite love triangle in any current YA series. The romantic tension between Sarah herself, Sean – who she hasn’t forgiven for lying to her about his identity – and the tormented Nicholas works really well and actually adds a lot of depth to the novel. Also adding depth is the slow revelations about the history of the Midnights, who are a far cry from a 'standard' heroic fantasy family - indeed, there were times when I thought that they were arguably more to blame for Sarah's problems than the villains were! Sarah's discovery of her family's past is fascinating, while the world-building, a strong point of Dreams, continues to be good, and it benefits from an ending which seems to tie up more than the first book did.

If there is a criticism to be made, I think that it's arguably a little too long - it doesn't feel quite like it's a story that needs 350 plus pages to be told - but that's a fairly minor complaint. Overall, this is well worth reading and I'm certainly looking forward to the conclusion of Sarah's story.

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