I wasn’t able to get into this book. I tried multiple times but couldn’t connect. This is why I originally did not give any feedback.

I tried reading this book but sadly I didn't make it very far while reading this book. I think that the different point of views made it a bit difficult to understand . I usually love this author's books and I hoped that this one would work out for me.

This narrative is all over the place. It's halfway between second and first person, and can't decide between the two. Another story where I'm not interested in high school social hierarchy, however snarky that depiction may be. It's not a captivating way to hook a reader...

Unfortunately I didn't finish this book, as I couldn't get into it - nothing against the author or book, just not to my personal taste. Thank you for the opportunity to read it.

This was disappointing - clumsy writing, petty problems and just uncompelling in general. Disappointing as the blurb sounded fun and imaginative.

An interesting book! I greatly enjoyed this one from beginning to end. Full review coming soon on my blog.

This book, while not technically a paranormal book is very like a YA paranormal romance in many ways. High school student, Sarah, has a sleep disorder that is so severe she has to be tied to her bed or she might hurt other people. This causes problems in her social life. When she meets Wes, who is literally the boy of her dreams, and she finds out they are both taking the same experimental medication at the same sleep clinic which is allowing them to affect people's real lives, a plot of revenge and danger emerges. Action, danger and romance abound in this YA mystery thriller.

This book follows Sarah, a teen girl suffered from a sleep disorder. After taking an experiemental drug to help her disorder she learns that she can enter the dreams of others and even take control of their bodies. The premise was interesting and the story definitely had plot twist. What made this book unlikable for me was that the main character became the villian. Which would be fine had her actions ever been really justifed. The things she did took revenge to a new level and she never faced any real consequences. It was a book that I finished but I could take it or leave it.

Sarah Reyes has a sleep disorder that makes her act out her dreams until she is given a chance to partake in a trial for an experimental drug that might help her. At first, all is well and the drug seems to work and then unexplained things start happening to Sarah that seem to indicate the drug was not a good idea.
I do enjoy the odd YA novel. Okay, I really like YA novels and this one seemed okay to me but I seemed to lose interest a bit at times and felt like the characters were a bit too flat. I did enjoy it enough to want to finish the book.

This title was a Did Not Finish. Unfortunately, I was unable to connect with it whether it be for characters, story-line or writing style.

Thank you for providing me with a copy.

“Sarah! “Stop!, You’re going to klll her!” a familiar female voice shrieks. Sarah has her hands locking firmly on Gigi’s chin and forehead, as she is about to snap her neck.
Sarah Reyes, a 17 year old girl who suffers from REM, which is a sleep behaviour disorder where she is physically acts out her vivid dreams while she is still asleep.
Sarah then agrees to a clinical trial using drug called Dexidnipam. At the beginning, everything seems to being going well and she seems to be cured, until she starts getting side effects. And then a guy from her nightmare shows up at her school.

I give this book 3 stars and would definitely recommend it to a friend. It was a good read. Its a suspense thriller. I would love for part 2 of Sleeper to be published.

OH! I have such mixed feelings on this title. The premise lured me in, but the story veered a bit from my expectations - which is both good and bad. This is a book with a lot of twists and turns, which typically is a good thing.
The biggest twist for me here was the protagonist, Sarah - while she starts out as a victim, she becomes rather unlikable - and a bit unreliable as a narrator because her perspective becomes a bit warped. I read the story with a mix of fascination and horror, uncomfortable at the premise of taking control over another's body and having things forced upon them against their will or knowledge crosses a clear moral line, and the horror in part was with those actions themselves.
However, I appreciated that the author let Sarah grow from a moral perspective, and the book wrapped up nicely. This was a book that made me uncomfortable and, for a while at least, struggling to like the characters, but kept me in there to the end.

Sorry I could not give a review as this was not compatible with my Kindle.

When reading a YA novel, I always try not to be the judgmental adult slash parent of a teenager. I know teenagers do things that they shouldn't. I know they experiment with sex and alcohol. I know teenagers can be cruel, fighting for every modicum of status in a rigorous hierarchy of cliques and groups. To pretend otherwise is naive and asking for trouble. Therefore, I expect these sorts of behaviors in novels geared towards teenagers, and I push aside any feelings of discomfort I have when thinking about my own children in similar situations. Unfortunately, Sleeper pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable in YA novels, making it a novel I neither enjoyed reading nor would recommend to others.

There have been numerous books about revenge over the years, and the best ones offer fascinating glimpses into the psyches of the victims as they perpetrate their revenge on their unsuspecting tormentors. While revenge is never the answer, these types of novels are always intriguing because they allow readers to live vicariously through those who are successful in enacting their revenge. These books do not condone revenge, but they are at least entertaining. With Sleeper however, there is something off about the revenge enacted by Sarah.

First, her plans are totally without forethought. She enters into each revenge action without a plan and with no concern about the repercussions other than her own feelings of satisfaction. Some of the things she does are horrible acts, violating bodies and privacy in ways that are downright disturbing, yet she only starts feeling a modicum of guilt after the situation has already spiraled out of control.

Then there is the issue of pacing. The story progresses too rapidly to allow for any deliberation or even character development so we never see Sarah's victims beyond her own tainted thoughts. We never really learn if the punishment is deserving of the crime, if the girls she harms are truly deserving of revenge. We only get Sarah's version, and she is too emotional to believe. If I am going to be able to condone someone's behavior, I need more than her word for it that someone else deserves the nasty treatment she metes out to others.

Finally, there are the punishments themselves. We are not talking about a Mean Girls' type burn book or the sharing of secrets here. We are talking about forcing classmates to do things against their will, violating their most private secrets, and sharing them with the world. We are talking about secretly drugging classmates so that they are oblivious to this happening to them, and therein lies my biggest problem with this novel. While Ms. Cadenhead is not necessarily condoning secretly drugging others, there is way too much of it occurring for someone not to walk away from the book with the idea that it is possible to do so without getting caught. Unbelievably, there is no punishment for those actions. One could argue that the state Wes is in at the end of the novel is punishment enough, but it is not. Neither Sarah nor Wes ever face the consequences of the drugging or of their actions against schoolmates.

What this novel is is one giant temper tantrum by a teenage girl who experiences social isolation at the hands of her "friends" because they do not know about her disorder and therefore overreact when confronted with it. There are so many different directions Ms. Cadenhead could have taken with this plot that could have been helpful in reminding readers that everyone that age is just trying to fit in, that true friends will stand by you, that the upper echelons of popularity are not the objective of high school. Instead, Sarah jumps into the deep end, using experimental drugs on others - drugs they do not know they are taking - as a way to make herself feel better. It is wrong on so many levels.

Sarah and her new love interest are despicable on so many levels, and neither one has the charisma or character development to pull off the evil villain vibe while remaining interesting. Sarah rationalizes her behavior as being a strong, independent woman, but one smile from Wes has all of her potential doubts rapidly disappearing. So much for being strong and independent. As for Wes, he epitomizes what is wrong with our culture with its vilification of rape victims and protection of rapers. I finished the novel hoping that there would be one final lesson that everything Sarah and Wes do is fundamentally wrong, and I remain disappointed that there was none. Sleeper is not the type of novel we need right now as we fight against increasing misogyny and a government that supports the groper in chief.

A full take on sleepwalking that goes beyond your average hike about when sleeping. Sarah has a REM disorder. She doesn't just sleep walk, she has a whole "life" going on while sleeping. Introduced to a new experimental drug, it's suppose to help cure her. Now it's worse, now she sees new creatures, evil creatures, and the lines between awake and dreaming are getting confusing.

I hung in there pretty good, until we get to the assaults and the rape situations. That never resolved properly, it kept hanging and really bothered me. It rather has some warnings about acting out your dreams, but more so I was just aggravated with the things that weren't resolved and justice that wasn't served.

My copy came from Net Galley. My thoughts and opinions are my own. This review is left of my own free volition.

I really wanted to like this book. It seems like one that would be totally up my alley but I just did not enjoy it.. It had a lot of promise, an interesting concept, and a compelling world, but I did not connect with the characters and the plot that was missing some of the charm and interest I was hoping for.

Sleeper by Mackenzie Cadenhead sounded like such a Christine book with the promise of a sci-fi thriller about what happens when you can share dreams and alter others. Unfortunately, despite my attempts are trying to finish it, I had to stop at the 68% mark. It started out kind of interesting with Sarah having a peculiar dream that she enacts in real life without her even being aware she’s doing it. This results in almost killing her best friend and then said girl tries to ruin her social life at their high school. Okay, fine. There’s a boy in this dream that suddenly shows up at her school named Wes. They’ve never met before so this definitely piqued my interest. Who was he? How did she start dreaming about him before they met? I had questions. They discover they are actually having the same dream, are conscious of it the whole time, and can maneuver their way around other people’s dreams. Here’s where my issues start happening.

First of all, by the time I got to 68% of it being over with, we still have no idea why Sarah and Wes can share dreams. We know that taking this experimental drug called Dexid is what allows this to happen but we don’t know why and the characters don’t even care to know why. They’re just like cool, let’s abuse this weird side effect and take revenge on Sarah’s former friends for being mean. Maybe at the very end of the book it’s revealed how this drug does this? I don’t know but I finally just quit caring. My real issue with this book is Wes and Sarah’s behavior once they discover the unique and unexplained powers of Dexid.

Sarah was called out in front of the student body about her accidental dream re-enactment and her former best friend is a nasty popular girl. But really and truly, it’s nothing out of the ordinary you see in your typical mean girls of high school portrayals in novels. But A) Wes is a terrible influence and B) THE TWO OF THEM ARE SO MUCH WORSE. They basically jump into these girls’ bodies, butcher their appearances, commit weird, inappropriate, almost incestual sex acts WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT because they have snatched their bodies BY DRUGGING THEM. Not only is that something that should just piss you off automatically but we need to go back to Point A. Wes is a terrible person. He keeps pressuring Sarah into taking more and more pills to get better control of their abilities (and you guessed it, she agreed) but this chick is also completely okay with Wes slipping her “victims” drugs – roofie style – so that they can get their revenge. WHAT THE HECK. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Wes and Sarah become the epitome of instalove by like the 3rd day of knowing each other. So anyway, Sarah doesn’t even question how Wes knows how to roofie people and since he starts kissing her after he mentions it, she flat out says, and I quote, “Truth is, though I should care how he does it, I don’t.” I went on a twitter rant about how girls should be sticking up for other girls and watching each other’s backs. Sarah lost a ton of points in my book during this passage. I just can’t even believe she stuck around with this random guy after he admitted he knew how and was comfortable roofie-ing someone but also that she brushed it off like it was no big deal.

Fast forward a couple of chapters and I think finally Sarah has a moral compass. Finally, this girl realizes invading people’s dreams and lives and trying to ruin them makes her no better, and quite frankly, even worse than they are. I also start to think maybe she’s realizing Wes is shady af and she needs to get out now. But then, as has been the case, she proves me wrong. Only one girl from her previous group has stuck by her side throughout this whole thing and she, very gracefully, expresses her concerns about Wes and Sarah’s new behavior. Sarah basically loses her shit and says some horrible things to this girl who has always been there for her. I lost even more respect for her in this instance.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to make this super long but I just had so many thoughts about this book. It had such potential and a cool concept but it all got completely overshadowed by the pettiness and the morally corrupt scenes that took place. It might have gotten better by the end. We might have finally understood why this drug allows Sarah and Wes to join forces and dream together and even why they can go into other people’s. Who knows, maybe Sarah got over her disgust with her friends and realized what she was doing was worse. Maybe she realized Wes was no good, got over her lust for him, and kicked him to the curb. Maybe even Wes calmed down and became a decent boyfriend. I don’t know but I just don’t really care enough to find out.

The End.

TLDR:
Revenge became morally questionable and ridiculous. Instalove galore. Neither character exhibited much of a conscious by 68%. No real explanation of why they could do things in their dreams. Became uninterested.

I really wanted to like the story and some parts I did. But overall it was not my kind of book. There where too many things I had problems with, that it wasn't easy to read through the book. But I finished it and it was an ok read. I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thanks to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire!

Boy did this one change quickly. We went from the realization that this girl can interact with other's dreams to twisted revenge fantasies very quickly. And her willingness to cross moral boundaries was frankly quite disturbing. Its one thing to mess with the girl who seems to be intent on destroying your life by cutting her hair, something else entirely to tell your peer group that an innocent girl is having an incestuous relationship (in an awful, contrived scene) just because you can. The dream travel concept sat okay with me but the characters tested my willing suspension of disbelief.