Sixteen (The Dreamwalker Diaries #2)

Sixteen is the second installment in author Jen Estes' The Dreamwalker Diaries. 16-year old Ashling (Ash) Campbell is a sophomore at Billings HS in Montana. She once believed that if you died in your dreams, you died in real life. In Fifteen, Ash discovered that she is someone who is extremely rare. She is a dreamwalker. She can travel to the future, & arrive in an older version of herself. She even learns about a bleak future where she joins a rebellion and fights against evil.

Thanks to her extraordinary efforts 6 months ago, Walker Smith, aka the Bad Guy, aka Jumlin Demon Spawn who was responsible for Ash's horrific loss, was stopped in his tracks. He plans for Billings was stopped, and his one piece that could have made Smith win, was taken off the board, and sent away. Ash is still suffering from that loss, and the betrayal of her best friend Tate Witko who left her behind to run away with her foster sister Nadette.

Ash has tried a number of different avenues to time travel back to the day of the incident, but her attempts have landed her in hot water with the law, and with her surrogate Aunt Levaughn. Ash realizes that something drastic needs to be done since the next celestial event that will allow her to Dreamwalk, won't happen for another 15 years. Her search for Dr. Robert Dietz, who she met in Fifteen, ends up with some very interesting revelations, and an emotional visit to the past, and a plan to ensure that Smith never gets the chance to hurt anyone Ash knows again.

There are several parts of this story that stood out for me. The first was the prologue which took readers back in time to the very first Dreamwalker. I liked this because it puts Ash's and her fellow Dreamwalker's purpose into perspective, and also adds a diverse addition to the series. The second is that Ash has a bit of a romance angle going on in this book, and it is not who you would have thought. In fact, her love interest isn't afraid of getting his hands dirty in order to help Ash with her counter punch to Walker Smith.

The character I most feel for is Skylar Smith. She's Ash's friend, and one that has done whatever she can to make Ash feel like she's necessary in the face of antagonism from Skylar's rich friends. But, there are spoiler issues that I can't nor won't discuss with regards to Skylar. One can hope that she lands on her feet, and gets the payback she deserves. I also love Aunt Levaughn for simplistic reasons. Here is a woman who is now mayor, who is guardian to Ash, who has to watch as Ash unravels, and then she finds herself being part of Ash's new demon hunters.

I do hope that the author and publisher releases the third installment within the next year. We have waited two long years for this novel to be released, and even though it doesn't
disappoint, one can not know where they will be in a year, or even if they will still be alive by then.

Two years... I have waited for this book for two years. It was a long wait and sometimes I wasn't sure if there even would be a second book. But then, finally, here it is. The second installment in the Dreamwalker Diaries. Was it worth the wait? YES, yes it was. With a lot more background information about how it come about the dream walkers and the first victim of the Jumlin. The book pics up where the first one ended, with Ash facing the consequences of trying to get her hands on sleeping pills. She's desperate to find help for getting her mom back. But nothing can prepare her for the journey ahead of her. Seeing her mom as a teen, Tate coming back to town with Nadette in tow, Glen making a appearance at her door, the Jumlin catching on to her actions and the feelings she has for a boy she thought not liking. Action filled, "Sixteen" is a real page turner and I couldn't put the book down. The ending gives me hope that there might be a third book in the future. "The Dreamwalker Dairies" is a series I highly recommend to all YA adult readers. If you haven't read the books yet, grab the first in this series, "Fifteen" and start reading. You're missing out on a real good story!
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley and Curiosity Quills Press!

When I realized that there are two books in this series I just had to read book one first, so that I could do justice to the author Jen Estes and her fans.
Book 1 FIFTEEN ~ The Dreamwalkers Diaries

In legends, we are told if one dies in their dreams they will die in real life.
Fifteen-year-old Ashling Campbell knows that this is not true because when she closes her eyes every night, she doesn’t dream Instead, she is tossed to the front row of her future self’s execution - fifteen years from now - monsters have taken control of her hometown and she, or rather, her 30-year-old counterpart, is their public enemy number one.

For three months and counting, it has been the same dream… until an encounter with an antique dreamcatcher. Ash falls asleep to discover she’s no longer a mere spectator in these dreams - now she’s astral-projecting into the body of her future self. Each night, she goes on the run with a ragtag group of rebels - who have no idea she’s really a high school sophomore and not their noble warrior. She must make it through each night so that she can wake up and find a way to change the future. For every action, she does in the present day, she falls asleep to discover it had an equal impact fifteen years later. It’s up to her to manage her two worlds and make sure she’s still got a place in both.


Book 2 SIXTEEN ~ The Dreamwalkers Diaries

Together her thorny family tree, deal with a friend’s untimely return, and pass her driver’s test - all before she turns… SIXTEEN.
This is the second book in author Jen Estes series ‘The Dreamwalker Diaries’, it is about a girl named Ashling Campbell who keeps having vivid dreams about witnessing an execution, in a dystopian world, where monsters were very much real.
She continues having the same dream, over and over, until one day, out of frustration, she breaks the dreamcatcher she has hanging in her room ~ clearly it was not stopping her nightmares ~ and instead of just seeing the execution happening, she’s living it; the woman her dreams have been dying for the past 3 months is her, 15 years in the future.
With the dreamcatcher no longer shielding her, Ash’s dreams are no longer just dreams; she unknowingly developed the ability to astral project herself into her future self’s body while she’s asleep, and subsequently alters her future by doing things different in the present.

Sixteen delves deeper into the history of the Jumlin, and the Dreamwalkers, giving the reader a better understanding of what drives each. Ash is still coping with what happened in the first book, and trying to figure out how to fix what went wrong. This is proving difficult, however, because her dreamwalking window has closed. She seeks the help of Dr. Dietz ~ the neurophysiologist from the college sleep lab, only to find things are a lot more complex than she originally thought.

In this second book of this series, we get to see what happens when Ash’s past, present, and future collide
Things get interesting and once I started reading this story I could not put the book down until I had finished it.
When I closed the book, I was speculating if there will be another book in this series. I hope so it was a great read and kept me hooked to the end.