Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares Book review

 

Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares

By: Tehlor Kay Mejia

Disney Publishing Worldwide

Rick Riordan Presents

Children’s Fiction/Middle Grade/Own Voices

Publish Date 3 August 2021

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I received this e-arc from NetGalley and Disney Publishing. I want to thank them both for letting me review this book.

Good Reads Synopsis:

“Paola is a brilliant, furious girl who often trusts her brain but trips over her heart.”–Sarah Gailey, Hugo and Locus award-winning author of River of Teeth
Six months after Paola Santiago confronted the legendary La Llorona, life is nothing like she’d expected it to be. She is barely speaking to her best friends, Dante and Emma, and what’s worse, her mom has a totally annoying boyfriend. Even with her chupacabra puppy, Bruto, around, Pao can’t escape the feeling that she’s all alone in the world.

Pao has no one to tell that she’s having nightmares again, this time set in a terrifying forest. Even more troubling? At their center is her estranged father, an enigma of a man she barely remembers. And when Dante’s abuela falls mysteriously ill, it seems that the dad Pao never knew just might be the key to healing the eccentric old woman.

Pao’s search for her father will send her far from home, where she will encounter new monsters and ghosts, a devastating betrayal, and finally, the forest of her nightmares. Will the truths her father has been hiding save the people Pao loves, or destroy them?

Review:

This is the second book in Tehlor Kay Mejia’s Paola Santiago Series. I did not get a chance to read the first book in the series before I read this one, the author did such a great a job of explaining the back story that I really didn’t have to read the first book. However, I am still going to read the first book to get a better picture of previous events.

This book is about a girl named Paola. She has the special ability of learning things through dreams. She and her best friend Dante are not getting along since their last adventure, and he blames her for everything that is happening in this story. She has another best friend named Emma, who is always there to cheer her up when she down.

In this story, she must go to Oregon to find her long lost father in to figure out what is going on around them, and how to to help Dante’s Grandma. She also teams us with some ghost hunter friends she met in the first book.

There were a lot of adventures and fighting happening throughout the story. She has a unique way of figuring things out to accomplish what needs to be done. It was an action packed book, and I enjoyed the story. I gave this book a 4 star rating.

Does she find her father? Do Dante and her become friends again or do they keep fighting? You will have to read the book to find out.