A Better Nightmare — Megan Freeman

If the entire world believes in a lie, does that make it the truth?

A dark and absorbing allegory for the power that young people possess in their bones to change things that feel far bigger than them, The Monster I Made is a whirlwind adventure -- a story of friendship, romance, and a radical crusade for one group of teens to fight for their right to feel.

Emily Emerson is nearly sixteen, finally a senior at the Wildsmoor Facility. But so is Meera, isn't she? Meera, who is nineteen and has been a senior for as long as Emily can remember? Here, the students live each day as shadows, one day blurring into the next, hardly aware of life passing them by while the symptoms of the Grimm Cross Syndrome that afflicts them all is trained out of them. Rules. Order. Repetition. Medication.

Emily was eight when she started showing signs of the disease. Odd dreams, hallucinations â€" impossible things that happened around her. Unconscious thoughts that could be set free into the world -- flowers that covered the house, thick like a forest and sowed with nothing more than her unconscious thoughts. It was beautiful until it turned evil, when Emily did her first bad thing and found herself here. Now, she'll do anything to get better and get back to her life. She'll be more quiet and obedient than everyone else.

Until she meets Emir.

Emir isn't like the other kids at Wildsmoor. He's quicker and livelier. He says things that he shouldn't â€" dangerous things. Emir is electric, magnetic in more ways than Emily can know.

When Emir introduces her to The Cure, a secret society for kids who believe that The Grimm isn't a disease at all, but a gift, Emily starts to wake up, and so do her strange abilities. The outcome is magic.