Unquestioning obedience is fair trade for survival in the City of Nightmares. Especially when this haunted outcast has been faking it all along... A prickly girl, an arrogant boy & a vengeful ghost weave a dance of death in this multi-awarded first-in-series Dystopian-Gothic Fantasy for fans of V.E. Schwab, Laini Taylor, Holly Black, Kendare Blake & Cassandra Clare. Cole is one trial from finally earning a future. One where she’ll get to live, even if it is in silent, isolated drudgery. The price of protection from the soul-sucking monsters overrunning her city is absolute, unfailing compliance with Tower regulation. But keeping her mouth shut is one thing. Controlling her thoughts—not to mention the ghost who haunts them? Not so easy. She can’t afford to screw up again. But when the cracks in her "good girl" act widen, neither Nightmares nor Tower authorities descend. Instead, a cocky stranger slips in with a dangerously tempting offer. The young rebel's forbidden whispers of a glittering underworld beneath the drowned streets are going to get someone killed. Someone else—because regulation is there to keep the monsters at bay. And she's not about to sacrifice herself on the altar of his arrogance. But all her careful plans go up in smoke when she stumbles over the devastating conspiracy smouldering at the heart of her homeland. Turns out her future isn’t the only one on the verge of crumbling to ash. And the only way to survive might just be plunging headfirst into the flames... The Nightmares are rising. Will one girl's forbidden dreams—and long-buried magic—be enough to stop the coming massacre? This lush, genre-bending YA Fantasy of a darkly gothic dystopia overrun by eldritch horrors is recommended for readers 14+. Love science fantasy with an ecopunk edge, eerie dark fantasy, and slow-burn gothic fantasy horror for teens and up like Anna Dressed in Blood, This Savage Song, Shadowhunters, and Strange the Dreamer? Read this "endorphin-rush of a story" today!