Also posted at http://socially-awkward-bookworm.tumb... 
 Synopsis: 
 What is your darkest nightmare? Tell the Nightmare Elf and he can make it go away. Or so says the contest entry form that Ivy Jensen finds in her email. Of course Ivy isn't her real name. She left that behind when her parents were brutally murder. Even from the safety of protective services, Ivy lives in constant fear that her parents' murderer is going to come back for her. She enters the contest, never expecting to win, but she and six other contestants are selected for an all-inclusive trip to beat their nightmares and meet legendary horror movie director Justin Blake. It's an opportunity to die for. 
 Thoughts: 
 This novel reads very much like a horror movie. It reminded me a lot of Project 17 (it even had a POV that's written as if it's a screen play). It also has the same problems that Project 17 had. There are six different POVs. Sometimes they seemed very distinct (Garth, Natalie, and Ivy were the easiest for me to know) and other times I'd forget whose chapter I was in and need to flip back to the start (Parker and Taylor were constantly blurring together for me). 
 I wasn't aware when I started the book that it's the first in a series and the ending seemed very, very abrupt. It's definitely an unfinished story and will leave you hanging with a lot of unanswered questions. The first half of the book focuses on the teens' arrival and it's not really until the last 60-70% that the horror really begins. I wasn't invested enough in characters to care as they began to disappear, but the set up of an abandoned amusement park and rides based on the participants fears were definitely creepy. 
 Catch a sneak peek here. 
 Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. 
 Publication Date: July 22, 2014.