Nightmare hunter

by | Jun 4, 2025

Maxwell Dark hunts monsters—but only in your dreams. He’s recently showed up in Gloomy Elms, a spooky town with a nightmare problem and he’s found the perfect client, if only she’ll let him into her dreams.

Sid, a middle schooler who’s just living her life, is freaked out when a weird kid shows up and claims he can “help” her. But her nightmares are getting worse and no matter how much her friends make fun of him, it’s starting to look like only Maxwell can help. Together, they dive into Sid’s worst nightmares, filled with grotesque monsters, to search for the nightmare that’s causing all the trouble. However, Sid’s nightmares are getting worse and they’ve had no success in tracking down the cause, plus Maxwell’s no closer to his own quest, finding his lost sister who vanished into the dream world years ago. Can Sid defeat her nightmares, with Maxwell’s help?

The human characters are all drawn very similarly, with round faces, big eyes, and light skin tones. A few kids in the background at Sid’s school have darker skin or chunkier builds. Maxwell’s eyes look vaguely distressed and his black hair, outlined with thick white borders, sweeps over one eye. Sid has light brown skin and a cinnamon roll of hair on top of her head. At night, it has a purple tinge, but it’s brown in the daylight. Although the town of Gloomy Elms has some stereotypically spooky elements, the really gross horror shows up in Sid’s nightmares. Tentacled and fanged creatures in vivid hues smash through a grotesque world, splashing Sid and Maxwell with unidentifiable substances. Although they are splashed with blood at one point, there’s no realistic, human-based horror – even the nightmare versions of Sid’s “friends” are obviously not real, looking like zombie caricatures.

The caricature horror, leaning more towards the gross than the truly terrifying, plus the somewhat simplistic plot – Maxwell is twelve and is wandering between towns and orphanages to travel into people’s nightmares – put this firmly in middle grade territory. There are moments where Sid stops in the middle of fleeing from monsters to reflect on what true friendship is and Maxwell’s behavior often comes off as more socially awkward than dramatic or heroic. However, although this will certainly not be a good choice for parents who dislike all forms of scary stories and horror, it will be very popular with kids who have grown up with cartoon horror and are fans of the Five Nights at Freddy’s world but don’t want something too serious.

Nightmare Hunter 
By Brady Smith
Penguin Random House, 2025
ISBN: 9780593751183

NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11)