Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

 Yumi and the Nightmare Painter was another one of Brandon Sanderson's Secret Projects books (like Tress of the Emerald Sea). It sounded fantastic, so I've been really excited to read it. :)

Yumi is a yoki-hijo, a girl of commanding primal spirits (it works better in her language). She lives a life of ritual, in service to her people, calling spirits from the earth to power devices to make peoples' lives easier. Painter (his actual name is Nikaro, but he calls himself Painter) holds the civic job of painting nightmares. In his world, nightmares escape the shroud, which surrounds his city, and it's up to the nightmare painters to paint them into harmless shapes so they disappear and leave everyone alone. When a spirit asks Yumi for help, Yumi and Painter find themselves magically thrust together. They spend twelve hours in Yumi's world, with Painter inside of Yumi's body and Yumi able to only interact with him and the spirits of objects, and the other twelve hours in Painter's world, where Yumi is physically there and Painter is the spirit. Together they need to figure out why this is happening to them, how they can stop it, and what exactly the spirits needed their help with! And along the way, they become entangled in each other's lives.

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter was fantastic from start to finish. I loved the worldbuilding - Yumi's and Painters worlds were so different and interesting. I loved all of the characters. Both the two main characters were interesting and grew a lot. And the other characters from their two worlds were all interesting as well, and really helped place you in each world (everyone from Yumi's life were all about the ritual of her calling, while Painter's felt so modern in comparison, hanging out at restaurants and going shopping. I also really enjoyed the story. I loved seeing how both Yumi and Painter navigated their situation (the book tended to switch perspectives from chapter to chapter, so you would get one from Yumi's view, and the next from Painter's). They really grew as individuals as the book unfolded and I really liked that. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter also had some twists and turns that I definitely did not see coming! 

I really enjoyed reading Yumi and the Nightmare Painter and definitely recommend it! :)