Maia was the daughter of famous "ghost hunters" so she was not frightened of the paranormal. After meeting rich girl, Jordin Cole and agreeing to help Jordin have a paranormal experience, she found that there are indeed some things in this world that you SHOULD be VERY afraid of. This was much better than my expectations. I believe that it got off the theme of the story at the end but never the less I did enjoy it. I really like the chapters that contained the history of the haunted place that they visited. ( )

Could not put down. ( )

My favorite parts of the book were the chapters about the haunted places. My library classified this book under inspirational, that is not where I would file it. The book is part mystery, part sci-fi, part horror. The book had very little in the way of mentions of Christianity. Not a bad book but I didn't like the ending, way to "out there" for me, and it felt very rushed. This book reminded me a lot of "Never Let Me Go". Okay but not my favorite "ghost" book. ( )

Ghosts….spirits…paranormal activity…its things many think about but don’t want to actually see. Maia Peters has grown up chasing it along with her parents who are world famous paranormal hunters. Ghosts and haunted places are like second nature to Maia- but in order to get away from that world Maia changes her appearance and starts college hoping for a new career and a way to live life.

Jordin Cole is extremely wealthy and very interested in the paranormal world. After hounding Maia for a few weeks, she offers to pay her well to take her on some real ghost hunts. Maia eventually can’t turn down the money, knowing it will pay for her college tuition and decides maybe one good haunted place will scare the pants off Jordin. To Maia’s surprise not only does the first night in an abandoned sanatorium not scare Jordin, it fuels her to find out more about the paranormal world….that is until Jordin winds up missing.

This book not only scared the pants off me but also kept me on the edge of my seat with a nail readily available to be chewed off. Parrish’s writing was amazing and paced so well that the story held my interest and my chills all the way through to a brilliant end. Nightmare is told through present day with flashbacks of Maia and Jordin’s investigations that twist together a creepy and thrilling plotline for the reader............Read full review at Blog (www.tinasbookreviews.com ( )

Maia Peters has had an unusual upbringing. As the child of two prominent paranormal investigators her life has been filled with first-hand experiences of ghost-sightings, but she’s hoping to put that behind her as she moves on with her chosen course of study in college. She is dragged back into familiar territory when a Jordin Cole, a wealthy student at her college enlists her help in exploring the paranormal for herself first-hand.

When Jordin appears to Maia as a spectre at a new amusement park, Maia realizes that something has gone dreadfully wrong and embarks on an investigation alongside Jordin’s fiancé (and aspiring pastor) to discover Jordin’s fate. Told in an alternating flashback manner, the search for Jordin is interspersed with Jordin and Maia’s past adventures “ghost-hunting”. In all honesty, the search for Jordin was more compelling than the ghost-hunting scenes, which tended to become repetitive after a while – more of the same, more of the same.

Robin Parrish writes in some of my target genres, so I was excited to see that his latest release – Nightmare – held potential to fall squarely within one of my top reading areas; Christian supernatural suspense. I’ve enjoyed some of Parrish’s writing in the past (Offworld), and while I find his tendency to spin some pretty improbable conclusions to require a bit too much suspension of disbelief, I was looking forward to his latest read.

Nightmare is a lightning fast read, it’s written in very simple language (which I believe is written to mirror the thinking/speaking style of the main character Maia), but which also lacked descriptive depth due to its straightforward simplicity. This is the sort of story that keeps readers going with the promise of a mystery unfolding – and there’s certainly that in spades.

I’m disappointed however that Maia’s perception of the paranormal seems to trump that of a Christian worldview, hers is written much more strongly, and though she claims belief in God, we really don’t see a lot of evidence of that in her life. Coming from a background in the occult, I tend to be wary of stories that glamorize communication with spirits, or that could develop a fascination with the subject. While I won’t say that Parrish has gone that far, he’s definitely treading on the line, and I’m definitely not comfortable with that.

As a result, I won’t be recommending Nightmare to anyone. There is far too much emphasis and fascination surrounding ghosts in our culture already. I was hoping that Parrish would come down with a decidedly more biblical point of view in this novel, but there’s just too much room for distraction and being led astray within its pages.

Reviewed at quiverfullfamily.com ( )