Enter the Nightmare (Harmony, #18) by Jayne Castle Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure romance, paranormal romance, romantic suspense, science fiction romance
Series: Harmony #18
Pages: 297
Published by Berkley on June 30, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Nightmares become real when a woman trying to rebuild her life enters the Hotel of Dreams in this exhilarating Harmony novel by New York Times bestselling author Jayne Castle.
Alice Radstone should have known not to return. Her life before the Hotel of Dreams had been the perfectly cloistered world of a teacher at the Ballantine Academy. When the death of her mentor forced her out, she was left to reinvent herself in the big city. Since then, things have not gone well. Ten months ago, after her first trip to the hotel, she woke up in the locked ward of a hospital for the criminally insane, told that she had murdered her husband on their wedding night. She has no memory of the husband or the wedding but after escaping the asylum, one thing is certain—she is never going back.
Unfortunately, Alice’s second reinvented life is also deteriorating rapidly, which is why she finds herself once again at the Hotel of Dreams—this time hiding in the shadows of her room, a dead body in the shower, and two men wearing masks creeping toward the bed to kidnap her. Again.
When the enigmatic and decidedly dangerous Owen March shows up, claiming he’s there to rescue her, she has no choice but to accept his offer—and hope that he doesn’t intend to kidnap her, too.
With Alice and now Owen in the killer’s sights, time is running out. Alice and Owen must trust each other and the electric passion between them if they are to make it out of this hotel alive.
My Review:
We first meet Alice Radstone while she’s in the middle of escaping from the ultimate escape room. She’s hiding in the bathroom of her suite at the Hotel of Dreams with the dead body behind the shower curtain, watching two goons stab a line of pillows taking the place of what would otherwise have been her body.
Her dead body.
Alice was lured to the spooky, out-of-the-way hotel THIS time with the promise of proof about her previous visit. On what was supposed to have been her honeymoon to a man she barely remembers meeting. A honeymoon night that resulted in him throwing himself off the hotel’s roof before Alice was sedated – for her own good, of course – and shipped off to an asylum.
A place where she was supposed to be kept drugged and pliant for the rest of her life. Because she drove her new husband to his death with her psychic powers and she’s too dangerous to be allowed out. EVER.
There are a few, just a few, truths mixed in with that pack of lies. Because this is the planet Harmony, where a significant portion of the human population really does have psychic powers, the most outlandish part of the story is more plausible than it might otherwise be.
Alice does have the power to drive someone to suicide by opening their mind up to their worst nightmare. But she didn’t – at least not in this particular case. Instead, someone has dumped Alice into her very own nightmare for reasons that she had no clue about the first time she visited the Hotel of Dreams.
But she does now. And she’s determined to get to the bottom of the nightmarish mess that has stolen months of her life, her reputation, and her freedom.
All she has to do is trust Owen March, the mysterious man who says he has come to save her from the goons. Alice is sure her own instincts about people are shot after what she’s been through, but her dust bunny Sebastian thinks March is trustworthy. So she will too. After all, on Harmony, the dust bunnies are usually right.
Escape Rating A-: I’m here for the dust bunnies. No, seriously, I mean it. The Harmony series (sometimes referred to as the Ghost Hunters series) has been taken over by the dust bunnies, and I’m absolutely here for it. You will be too.
But it didn’t start out that way, and neither did the planet of Harmony. It’s a former colony planet that lost contact with its planet of origin. Earth. When their imported high-tech failed after they lost their way home, the colonists did what humans do. They made do with what they had. They hunkered down through some dark times.
They survived.
Now, two centuries later, they’ve built themselves back up to a level of technology and civilization roughly equivalent to our own 21st century. But with a difference.
Many of the colonists who came to Harmony possessed psychic powers – even if their Earth disclaimed any such possibility. (It’s through this vector that the author’s Harmony series connects with her Arcane Society series written under her Amanda Quick and Jayne Ann Krentz bylines).
The planet itself nurtures and enhances those psychic talents, so the colonists have become more powerful and their talents have developed more facets as the humans survived, intermarried, and eventually prospered.
There’s a lot of lovely, glorious and frequently nefarious politicking and general skullduggery threaded through the entire ‘Jayneverse’ – and parts of that come to play in this entry in the series. But it all really does stand alone if you want to start here. (I’m fascinated with this kind of interwoven history, but if you’re not or you’re looking for a way in, here is just fine.)
The dust bunnies are native to Harmony, and they’re just the best, cutest, and most adorable little predators. Sebastian steals every scene he’s in, and that’s true of every dust bunny in the series.
Like many stories in the series, Enter the Nightmare is the story of two people on the run from powerful figures who are determined to silence them for reasons that are unknown to them as the story begins.
They bond because they’re stuck in whatever-it-is together, whether by choice or chance or in this case, a bit of both. And the only way out is through. Through the case at least, although they eventually figure out that they’ll never be through with each other. And that dust bunny Sebastian will be bringing all of his many, many dust bunny friends over for pizza for the rest of ALL of their lives.
This was a case of the right book at the right time for this reader. I needed a distraction, and something I could read in pieces and remain invested in the story. I saw the romance coming – because there’s always a romance in this series – but I enjoyed watching them figure it out AND figure out what was happening to them, why it was happening, and how to get ahead of everyone else’s plots and plans for them and their demise.
So I’m already looking forward to the next book in the delightful and suspenseful interconnected ‘Jayneverse’. That next book will be The Book Hunter, coming in January. It’s the follow up to The Shop on Hidden Lane, where psychic dog Bruce stole THAT show every bit as thoroughly as Sebastian did this one.
Stay for a Spell by 
There’s a saying that every cloud has a silver lining. As this story begins, Princess Tanadelle has just been cursed – which really should have been the cloud. But not for Tandy. Being cursed to be confined to a bookshop in the tiny town of Little Pepperidge wouldn’t exactly be a curse for any lifelong reader – and Tandy certainly is that.
Which doesn’t stop her parents from sending a literal rain of princes to her shop to cure her curse with a kiss. Because that’s the way fairy tales are supposed to work. But this isn’t and it doesn’t while the town benefits GREATLY from the princes, their entourages, and all the tourists who come to see the cursed princess and all the princes.
I especially enjoyed the way that the ‘parade of princes’ was handled for how it subverted so many tropes. Tandy dreads the princes. Not because they’re evil, not because anything bad is going to happen, but for the string of disappointments. Especially the issues surrounding the last prince, which is built up to be terrible – and is, but not in any of the ways that the reader expects and it’s charmingly done.
The Midnight Taxi by 
Trailbreaker (Prairie Nightingale) by 
BUT, then I saw this tour, and did look more closely at the authors’ names and remembered that I loved both their books (
Only the people who know about Prairie’s involvement well, know. Along with some people who made it their business to know. And that’s where Bernie Dubicki comes in.
Escape Rating A: Trailbreaker was even better than 
Which, by a circuitous route, leads back to the mouse poop on the conference room table and the team’s varying, but typical for each individual, reactions to it.
Second, I do enjoy the understated, hesitant, step forward and back romance between Prairie and Foster Rosemare. I’m not saying they should pick up the pace because it feels right this way under their circumstances. But there’s starting to be a feeling that what’s keeping the pace so slow is at least partly the long arm of coincidence inserting interruptions and taking him out of town at critical moments. That long arm can get brittle if it gets too long and starts seeming too coincidental. It’s not there yet but it is getting there. (My two cents and your reading mileage may vary.)
The Shop on Hidden Lane by 
The little shop on Hidden Lane in tiny Mirror Lake looks like a bit of a tourist trap for those who believe in the weird reputation of the town and the surrounding area. And it kind of is, but that’s not the business that keeps the lights on. Bea Harper makes her reputation performing paranormal investigations for the people who KNOW that it’s all real because they’re part of it.
But Bea Harper is missing, and so is Deke Wells, her romantic partner/frenemy – it’s complicated. Bea’s niece Sophy and Deke’s nephew Luke were surprised by the discovery of that relationship because the Harpers and the Wells have been feuding since the previous century.
The author has already dreamed that future, as this is part of long-running, multi-faceted, sometimes multifarious series that began – historically – with the Victorian Era set 
The idea that the government conducted secret experiments and then tried to cover everything up isn’t all that fictional. These particular experiments into the paranormal (most likely) are, but history tells us this sort of thing did happen, particularly in regard to the Manhattan Project in WW2 and the production of nuclear power afterwards. (If you want a REAL chill, read 
I loved that Bea and Deke found THEIR HEA even though we don’t see their romance. The amount of time they’ve been (secretly) involved also helps to balance out the instalove between their respective niblings, Sophy and Luke, which happens so fast and furiously hot that even the participants acknowledge it’s awfully fast although they are both deeply committed by the end of this FOUR DAY adrenaline race.
Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by 
And Violet’s actions in Dragon’s Rest, as well as Dragon’s Rest itself, are definitely cozy. The way she adopts the town and vice versa reminded me a lot of 
Six Weeks by the Sea: A Novel by 
The Shakespeare Secret by 
Escape Rating A-: This was absolutely fascinating – and all the more so because the germ of the original idea is rooted in an original article written by journalist Elizabeth Winkler that became the book 
The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant (A Merritt & Blunt Mystery) by 
Escape Rating B: At first, I thought this was a debut novel – but it’s not. The author has previously written dark thrillers under the name Elisabeth Elo and literary fiction as Elisabeth Panttaja Brink. So not a debut author, but still first in a new direction and a series.
Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by 
About the Author: