This was a magical book. I would recommend it for a very specific audience. If you enjoy having a large host of characters, where you don’t necessarily get to know each of them deeply or connect with them, or even necessarily like them, then this might be for you. It had a mysterious tone throughout, and a lot of it didn’t make sense, but for those who enjoy a sleepy, beautifully written novel, this one is for you.

This book really delivered what it said to me - it had a somewhat dreamlike quality in the writing and presentation, and finishing it did feel like waking up somehow! There was a constant sense of tension and underlying growing fear which was very well handled. I loved how it kept you thinking about dreams vs reality, what really is real for the Dreamers. It's one I would pick up to read again - in fact, I may do so!

Never heard of this author before but, my oh my, does she write brilliantly! Really pulled in by the blurb on this one and this continued with the quite magical and dreamy way that KTW writes and leaves things for the reader to ponder over. The characters are special and really make this book what it is. You won't get all the answers about the illness - so be warned if this will cause you frustration. It's far more about the people and gets told through these different points of view. Very memorable.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

This haunting end-of-the-world novel reads differently from others of that sort, much quieter, more introspective, more personal. The prose is lyrical and depth of character impressive. Like the title suggests, the novel feels quite dreamlike and unique in that way. It is as if we are thrust into the characters' sleep while simultaneously observing it. Very impressive work.

An interesting yet not wholly satisfying look into the impacts of a pandemic on a small town. Honestly, I am not one of those people who like being left in the dark and this book's sparseness in its details hampered my enjoyment of its insights.

Absolutely fantastic story, utterly brilliant and so different to anything I’ve read before. A beautiful slow-burn. Excellent, well written and addictive.

The Dreamers was one of my biggest reading surprises this year. Set on the West coast of the USA in normal town, a sleeping pandemic develops after one by one the people fall asleep and never wake again. I was interested by the synopsis but I did not expect to love it as much as I did. It’s a strange novel – for what sounds like a dystopian thriller, it is actually very sedate and dream-like in pace, with no clear main character. While everything about it is very understated and very much not my usual taste in books, I adored it and will be reading anything and everything by Karen Thompson Walker. One of my favourite reads of the year.

This book was right up my street. It had me hooked from the beginning with a suspense filled plot and great cast of nuanced characters. It easily rivals similar books in this genre such as Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel and Wanderers by Chuck Wendig.
I guess it's a bit strange that I felt compelled to read a book about a contagious airborne virus especially after the last year we've all had. It was eerily accurate with descriptions of quarantines, socially distancing and mask wearing. I kept wondering if I would have found these details believable if I’d read this book when it was first published in 2019 - crazy notions such as confining University students to their dorms, a perimeter lockdown around an ‘infected’ town and cases of a virus spreading so fast it overwhelms the health service….In a macabre way reading it was even more captivating because of these familiarities.

I'm so pleased with the author’s attention to detail, with other books of a similar genre I’m sometimes left asking questions about logistics, how do they eat and drink, do they still go to the toilet, what happens to people who live on their own? I also felt like nothing was sugar coated, some parts were pretty shocking and no protagonist was ‘safe’.
I felt truly invested in all the characters and was fascinated to find out what would happen in the end.
Haunting. Thought-provoking. Gripping.

I really loved this book. It moved me in a way that not many do – the connection with the characters, the other-worldliness that is very much our world. Wonderful.

A wonderful and unsettling tale. As the threat of a sleeping sickness sweeps through a community, Walker's gorgeous prose keeps the pages humming, showing a beautiful creativity and a haunting turn of phrase. Excellent stuff.

Beautifully creative and subtly unsettling story of a community faced with a devastating threat, shared through gorgeous prose, and a story that keeps you turning pages through some unexpected twists, all the while loving every minute.

Late review but I really need to say good things about this novel.

I loved this novel. It's one of those books that's about a thing (a localised epidemic) but actually, beneath the surface, very much about something else altogether. I loved the narrative tone which at first seemed a little patronising but is actually wryly ironic and suits the somewhat detached commentary of events. The narrative consists of vignettes of the various characters' experiences - flitting from the college girl to the couple with a new baby to the girls with a prepper father and so on. This technique and the narrative tone made the novel read a bit like a dream - very cleverly done. In fact, the writing is impressive on all counts. The ending was a little disappointing on first read i.e. no big reveal in terms of what the virus was, where it came from, why it caused the dreams, but on reflection I realised the ending more accurately reflected what the novel had more truly been about. No spoilers but the clue's in the title! I found this novel to be thought-provoking and, at times, deeply moving. Highly recommended.

I am in charge of the senior library and work with a group of Reading Ambassadors from 16-18 to ensure that our boarding school library is modernised and meets the need of both our senior students and staff. It has been great to have the chance to talk about these books with our seniors and discuss what they want and need on their shelves. I was drawn to his book because I thought it would be something different from the usual school library fare and draw the students in with a tempting storyline and lots to discuss.
This book was a really enjoyable read with strong characters and a real sense of time and place. I enjoyed the ways that it maintained a cracking pace that kept me turning its pages and ensured that I had much to discuss with them after finishing. It was not only a lively and enjoyable novel but had lots of contemporary themes for our book group to pick up and spend hours discussing too.
I think it's important to choose books that interest as well as challenge our students and I can see this book being very popular with students and staff alike; this will be an excellent purchase as it has everything that we look for in a great read - a tempting premise, fantastic characters and a plot that keeps you gripped until you close its final page.

I started this book without realising that I have already read one of Karen Thompson Walker’s books: “The Age of Miracles”, a few years ago. This was the story of what happens when the earth slows down on its axis, which means the days get longer and the minutes stretch out.

“The Dreamers” has some synergy with that one, her debut novel, in that it too examines time and how it affects us humans on earth. One day, a girl at college falls asleep and doesn’t wake up. Then another, and another student until suddenly, it’s a sweep of people who fall asleep and don’t wake up. They can and do die of starvation and dehydration without proper care but the issue is that it’s so contagious that all those who come into contact with sufferers. I know, I know, who reads a book about a pandemic, in the middle of one in real life?? Some of it is uncomfortably close to real life, the naysayers who refuse to believe that it’s real, the ones who try to break out of quarantine to get to their loved ones. This was published a year ago though so it’s not a rush job to take advantage.

Thompson Walker has a distinctive style which I neither dislike or like, to be honest – she takes what could be an action packed idea and turns it inside out, almost, concentrating on the microcosm of people, their relationships and how they are tested and stretched with this weird, scary time.

I also felt that the book didn’t go deep enough into what I thought would be interesting. I know that a story can only ever follow the lens of the author, of course, but I wanted to know how wide this disease was – we’re told it gets out of the small town and into the wider US, but nothing else. I wanted to know the why, not just how a young couple with a baby dreams differently.

If what you’re looking for is an interesting study of human nature in times of change, then this would be a great read. I honestly felt like it was enjoyable – I might not rush out to get the next book by this author, but it was a pleasant way to pass the time.

Thanks to netgalley and Simon & Schuster UK for the DRC! This was published a little while ago and is available in all good bookshops.

This is one of those books that’s easy to read so I could have finished it, but I also had no drive to pick up. With a big cast of characters that we flick between. I really struggled to become invested in the story which is such a shame considering the whole palaver going on at the moment and how similarly it rings with it.

This book is appropriately titled, because if I had to think of one word to describe it, it would be 'dream-like'. I really thought I was going to love it, as I love dreamy literary books that walk the line between realism and fantasy. The author's prose is undeniably lovely, and the short length was appealing. But the characters failed to grab me, and I ultimately just wasn't that interested.

This book is beautifully written and has a dreamlike quality to it. It feels like being in a dream whilst reading about the dreamers who are people struck down by a possible sleeping virus in a small town. There's a lot packed into this book that could be easily missed and so much to think about - there's so much about consciousness, new life and dementia that isn't understood.
It's clear from the other reviews that this book is very marmite though, but I absolutely loved it.
Thank you to Netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

An excellent follow-up to the great Age of Miracles, a gripping story of a sleeping illness placing a town under seige, told in a unique voice and style through the lives of its victims rather than your typical thriller. Thouroughly enjoyed it.

It starts with a college student who comes home exhausted from a party and falls asleep, only to never wake up. She doesn’t die; she just does not wake up. This unidentified sleeping sickness spreads through the quarantined student residence in Santa Lora, a small college town in California, before it spreads further out from the students on campus and reaches others in town. There is no sudden catalyst for this sickness, or at least, none that can be found or understood. People simply go to sleep deeply and stay that way. If this is the apocalypse, it’s a quiet, subversive sort.

Karen Thompson Walker’s The Dreamers follows her bestselling debut novel The Age of Miracles, which was about a young girl growing up in the face of the changes and challenges brought about by a change in the earth’s rotation and its effects on everything — from gravity to human behaviour, moods, tides and cosmic rhythms. The Dreamers features a larger cast of characters, though with equal introspection into their emotional lives. There are the college students who somehow don’t fall sick even though they spend much time in direct contact with the infected sleepers; the young parents who are terrified they will fall asleep and leave their newborn baby entirely alone; the daughters of a survivalist father who has prepped them for all sorts of disasters except this unimaginable one; the doctor attempting to understand the sleeping sickness who is quarantined in Santa Lora, away from her young son; and the shy, reticent roommate of the first girl who fell asleep. Walker delves into the hearts and minds of each character, exploring their hopes and dreams and fears when faced with this strange crisis. It’s not your standard post-apocalyptic scenario, nor is it a disaster story or a medical thriller. It’s a quiet, intimate and deeply introspective narrative. It’s romantic, in many ways, and sentimental and sweet — like most of its characters.

Walker’s cast really is just full of nice people. All the ones we spend time with are essentially good folk. If there is adversity, it comes in the form of the sickness, not other people. Which leads to the question: where are the hideous, terrible people who would take advantage of the sleepers, the dreamers, or of the homes they leave behind? Where is the anarchy, the violent chaos, the stealing, lying, cheating, murderous instincts that aren’t paranoias, but essentially human? There’s a little bit of the negative present, of course, but much of it is merely hinted at. Even the hungry lost dogs wandering the streets without their owners are approachable and toddle off easily with a pair of tween girls with absolutely no aggression.

A strange sickness spreads through the land in a languorous, well-crafted novel about love and loss, fear and endurance, but also about our ability to remain true and kind to each other

In an interview with the website Jezebel, Walker said that the degree of bad behaviour that takes place in post-apocalyptic stories is unbelievable to her, because in her experience of humanity, most people do not really want to do the wrong thing and that passive aggressiveness or pettiness would be the more commonly found faults, rather than straight up cruelty or violence. That’s a lovely sentiment and experience, but it doesn’t make for very good dramatic or arresting reading when everyone is just ‘nice’ and there isn’t much conflict. Meanwhile, “the afflicted go on sleeping a deep and steady sleep, their bodies now fed by plastic tubes taped into their noses, their skin kept clean by the gloved hands of strangers.”

As we follow Walker’s nice characters about their survival, we explore what this sickness may be and if it has been seen before, because “there are some who will tell you that this sickness is not entirely new, that its cousins sometimes visited ours. In certain letters from earlier centuries, you may find the occasional reference — decades apart — to a strange kind of slumber, a mysterious, persistent sleep.” But what has caused it? And why, of all places, in this small town that isn’t special in any way?

At first, they blame the air. It’s an old idea, a poison in the ether, a danger carried in by the wind. A strange haze is seen drifting through town on that first night, the night the trouble begins. It arrives like weather, or like smoke, some say later, but no one can locate any fire. Some blame the drought, which has been bleeding away the lake for years, and browning the air with dust. Whatever this is, it comes over them quietly: a sudden drowsiness, a closing of the eyes. Most of the victims are found in their beds. — Excerpt from the book

“The idea still sometimes surfaces in certain superstitious minds. Whenever a teenager drowns in the lake or a hiker goes missing the woods, some in Santa Lora wonder if this is a land designed for catastrophe. What if misfortune can be drawn to a place, like lightening to a rod?” There are no answers; only more questions that arise and the doctors who remain awake investigate the strangely active brains of the sleeping population. It seems that all those who fall asleep are found to be dreaming, and heavily: “there is more activity in these minds than has ever been recorded in any human brain — awake or asleep.” What are their brains doing? What are their dreams telling them? “The eyelids flutter. The breathing is irregular. The muscle tone is visibly slack. With each new patient,” the doctor notes, there are “signs that sleepers might be dreaming. What weird cases.”

Weird indeed, but not weird enough to damage the prettiness of Walker’s language. The Dreamers is written in languid, hypnotic prose to match its subject matter all the better. Walker turns a pretty phrase often, describing people staying away from those in need, acting in an “unkindness of fear.” She explains how the sleeping sickness moves from one person to another, “how the sickness travels best: through all the same channels as do fondness and friendship and love.” It makes for a languorous, aesthetic read, a story about love and loss, fear and endurance, but also about our ability to remain true and kind to each other even when we are unable to control what the future holds, even when the future may break us: “the only way to tell some stories is with the oldest, most familiar words: this here, this is the breaking of a heart.”

Probably just not for me. Felt a sense of deja-vu, like I've read it before. I did like that the dystopia aspect was relatively gentle, the world building was very subtly done and eased the reader into the new world.