3.5 stars. A sleeping sickness takes over a small college town in California. The epidemic unfolds through the experiences of several different characters. Not enough time is spent developing these characters. They remain two-dimensional with the reader not concerned beyond hoping that they do not fall ill with the sleeping sickness.

The description of a town gripped by fear and confusion is very convincing. Mixed into the narrative is a more philosophical discussion about the nature of dreams and reality that never quite hits the mark.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of the book in return for a review.

I loved Karen Thompson Walker's previous novel 'The age of miracles' and was delighted to receive this advance copy via netgalley, but overall I was slightly disappointed. The idea itself - a strange sleeping sickness quietly spreading through a small university town and the subsequent chaos it causes is fantastic, and the book is well written and thought provoking but I just didn't really feel very interested in any of the characters or their fate and unfortunately this impacted a lot on my overall enjoyment. Good but not great.

There is a virus spreading through the small California town of Santa Lora. It starts with one girl, a college student. She goes to sleep in her dorm room, and doesn't wake up. It starts off slowly, just a few people falling asleep and those close to them being unable to rouse them from their slumber. But the sickness creeps through the town and spreads; more and more people fall asleep, and nobody can say why. Or if they will ever wake up.

The writing is calm and quiet, and the people are simply falling gently to sleep. But somehow this is a tiny bit horrifying, and intensely sad. There is a creeping and silent panic in the pages. At the same time, though, there is such evident care in the way this is written. There is love among the characters, and beautifully written descriptions and thoughts. This has obviously been a labour of love for a very talented writer. It is a very contemporary novel, but simple and not trying to be anything other than exactly what it is.

This was a strange book to read. I enjoyed it all the way through; I felt completely encompassed by the pages as I read. But enjoyable as it was, it never really went anywhere as much as I wanted it to. It had a beginning, and then just carried on until the end. Having said that though, I truly liked this book a lot, it was a beautiful and touching read and not at all what I imagined it would be.

This was such a unique, surreal book - it seems to have received mixed reviews, but I'm definitely a fan. The topic - a mysterious sleeping sickness which sweeps slowly over a town - was a new one to me, and the writing style had a unique, elegant quality which made it stand out.

In an isolated Californian town, a University student falls asleep in her dorm and doesn't wake up. Soon, the mysterious sleeping sickness spreads. Doctors travel to the town to analyse what could be happening, the town begins to make national news and a quarantine is put in place as things worsen. But still, there's no answers. People are just falling asleep and not waking up, with no explanation.

This novel deals with incredibly emotional subject manner while somehow not getting too emotionally involved. There's a feeling of distance - almost dreamlike - in the lyrical prose with which the story is told, but it's undoubtedly beautiful. The author offers vignettes of interconnected lives which come together to paint a picture of a town in crisis. A complete stranger could save another's life, or pass on the fatal virus with the most innocuous contact.

All readers will have favourite characters but there's something here for everyone; a cross section of the small town. I personally really enjoyed Mei, the out-of-place college student whom the story opens with, and Ben and Annie, a young couple struggling with a new baby. Sara and Libby were also an intriguing pair; young sisters who live alone with a Doomsday prepping father. But happens when his worst imaginings become reality?

This book crosses multiple genres; the virus itself ventures in science fiction, but it's not really what the story is about. Instead, it's a character study which explores the town and country's reactions and the people it affects. If you're looking for answers and an unambiguous ending, you won't find it here. But what you will find is something gripping, poignant and thought provoking. A great start to my new year of reading.

In a town called Santa Lora, California, a teenage girl on the college campus falls in to a deep sleep and cannot be woken. Soon others in the same accommodation begin to succumb. At first it seems that the sleeping sickness is contained and limited to the college students living in close proximity on the same floor of the same building but before long other people in the town fall asleep. In the rest of the country and the wider world people see reports of the mysterious sleepers in Santa Lora on the news and some believe it is a hoax or perhaps a government experiment. Easy for them to say when it is not them or their loved ones lying in hospital beds, being fed and kept alive through tubes.

A very believable, unsettling read that is beautifully written.

‘This is how the sickness travels best: through all the same channels as do fondness and friendship and love.’ (The Dreamers - Karen Thompson Walker)

In a small town in Southern California, a strange and sudden sickness takes hold. This sickness shows no mercy and picks its victims at its own will, casting upon them a slumber that keeps them captive in their own dreams.

As panic prevails, the narrative shifts from person to person - each with their own haunting story to tell, each story mesmerising and moving in its own unique way. Woven together these story threads create a luminous tapestry of a book. A book that is so beautifully told that it held me under its spell from its opening page right through to its final word.

Simply stunning in every single way, The Dreamers will keep you entranced long after you turn its final page.

You know when you read a book and it is just so weird? The Dreamers is a book just like that. In some ways it is quite an easy read, as the writing flows nicely and the plot almost immediately draws you in. But it’s weird in that the phenomenon that occurs - most people in this small, American town succumbing to a deep sleep from which they cannot wake - is never explained. The event just happens and life goes on. There are hints of potential explanations, for example the idea of multiple parallel universes and the concept that every possible eventuality will have happened somewhere, just not necessarily in your universe (meaning that the strange dreams could be one kind of reality). But I’d have preferred a meatier explanation than that - I love a good, solid resolution at the end of a novel, and you don’t get that from this. You just end up feeling unnerved. Still, it is a good book and I would recommend - you’ll just have to wait until January 2019 to get your hands on it!

I loved KTW's debut novel and The Dreamers offers her readers another highly immersive, vividly imagined and poetic experience. There's an interesting blend of menace and melancholy in the tone of this book. As often with novels which don't have a protagonist, I did feel there was less opportunity to invest emotionally in the individual characters but that doesn't prevent me giving it a strong recommendation.

This is the most amazing book. At first I wondered whether the prose style was rather slow, and I wasn't sure about the fact that we could 'see inside' everyone's heads, but the pace and style matched the idea of 'dreaming' and there was plenty of action and dialogue to keep things moving along. The most beautiful book, with a wonderful concept, and dealt with brilliantly. Thank you, and well done! :)

I loved the premise of this book and really enjoyed reading it. The idea of a contagious sleeping sickness afflicting one small town was such a different one that I was immediately intrigued. The story is well written and keeps you gripped, waiting to find out what will happen. But, to my mind, the ending was a little disappointing - I felt like more could have been made of all the developments throughout the book.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster UK Fiction, NetGalley and Karen Thompson Walker for the chance to read and review this novel.

“She looks like an ordinary girl sleeping an ordinary sleep.”

The town of Santa Lora, California is enveloped by a mysterious illness known as the “sleeping sickness”. It originates in a dorm in the town’s college when a freshman comes home and falls asleep on her bed still wearing the clothes she’d gone out in. When she’s still sleeping almost 24 hours later her roommate calls an ambulance and she’s taken to hospital where baffled doctors try to figure out why she won’t wake. Then, another girl won’t wake up and the doctor’s start to worry.

Rumours are soon abound and local journalists begin to report on the events. But people aren’t overly concerned, it seems to just be something happening at the college on one dorm floor, no need for panic. As a precaution the students on that floor are isolated and monitored while the other students are evacuated; an overreaction in their opinion. But then others start to fall asleep and can’t be stirred. Specialists are called in, and the sleep specialists confirms the sleepers are dreaming. But other than that the only thing they know for sure is it is highly contagious. They begin to monitor everyone possibly exposed but it does nothing to slow the spread of the sickness, and soon extreme measures are taken to try and isolate this strange affliction to the small town.

“But isn’t every sleep a kind of isolation? When else are we so alone?”

When I started this book I was immediately enthralled by the poetic way in which it is written. The author has a distinctive style that is haunting, graceful, and breathtakingly beautiful. My mind was full of images of young ladies laid like Sleeping Beauty, but this time a Prince’s kiss couldn’t save them. The fascinating story was cryptic but in a way that made me want to read on and see where it would take me. I was invested in the people of this small town and eager to know what the sleeping sickness was, hoping a cure would be found before too many were affected.

Unfortunately, I found that as the book went on not only did the writing lose some of its magic, but the charm of the story faded a little too. Some of it was inevitable as we became more familiar with the illness and the characters, but it felt like the story wasn’t sure itself where it was heading anymore. I also felt like there was no real conclusion and I was left feeling dismayed that none of the things that were hinted at early on were included. You are left puzzling what you’ve read and there was a lot of philosophical references that influenced the direction it took. I wasn’t expecting these and think it made the story require more contemplation than my brain was able to handle at the time.

“Not everything that happens in a life can be digested...Some images never leave the mind.”

The Dreamers is a unique, mesmerising, enchanting, memorable book that can be abstract at times and has a serene air that rarely leaves, even though there is tension in the moments it is needed. The unsatisfying ending only meant a lower rating for me and I would still recommend this book, especially if you want to read something that’s completely different.

Definitely a unique and mysterious book that provides a lot of narrative for discussion and comparisons to how we live in modern society (with so much surveillance and social media) and how vulnerable we really can be.
I can see this being made in to an atmospheric film (like Birdbox)

Something a little different for me this one. I loved the description of The Dreamers and also Karen's other book The Age of Miracles so wanted to give it a go.
I do usually like a book that moves quiet quickly with twists and turns and with characters that I can connect with and I must say I wasn't sure that I got that from this book.
For a story about an event as catastrophic as this one, people falling asleep from an unknown virus, I would expect it to be written with action and noise, but it wasn't. What I did find however, and it crept up on me, was the emotion I got from the book. Not for the characters but from the way I realised the book left me feeling each time I stopped reading!
I sometimes found myself feeling almost a little uneasy and not understanding why. I even experienced some strange dreams. It was the last third of the book where I eventually recognised what was happening and that this sense of fear was staying with me throughout the day.

Something strange is happening in the college town of Santa Lora, tucked away in the hills some 70 miles from Los Angeles. A student from the college has failed to wake up, it’s isn’t that she’s died in her sleep it’s just that she’s slept on…and on. She’s been taken to the local hospital where doctors have established that there are signs only that she’s in a deep, dream filled, sleep. Then another student fails to awaken and then more. The medical team are at a loss to explain this phenomenon. Is it some sort of new virus? If so, how does it spread and what are the risks to the wider population in the college and beyond?

At the centre of this is a student called Mui, a quite girl with no real friends at the college. It is Mui’s roommate that was the first victim of this sleeping malady. As the number of cases ramp up we track her together with a number of other students and members of staff. Nathaniel is a biology professor whose male partner is now in a residential home suffering from a degenerative condition which makes it impossible for to communicate with others. Annie and Ben and young professors who have only recently moved to California from New York. They have a three-week old baby and the strains on their marriage – already evident before the birth of their child – are starting to re-surface under the demands of early parenthood.

It’s a slow moving tale, but a gripping one nonetheless. As this sickness starts to a take hold on the college and surrounding area we wonder if there is a cure or whether those affected will simply wake up at some point. Nobody seems sure of the answer. We also learn more about the key protagonists and, as a result, become invested in their fate. The afflicted patients continue to show signs of REM sleep – i.e. a sleep pattern synonymous with dreaming – but is it possible that this state can continue for days on end?

There is a shift in view towards the end of the book that I wont go into but suffice to say it does give us a new perspective on what’s going on in the minds of these patients. And it throws into deep focus the meaning of dreams: are they, as Freud suggests, to satisfy unconscious desires? Or are dreams just the natural expression of our imagination, integrating our conscious and unconscious lives, as Carl Jung suggests. But what of time theory - that the flow of time is an illusion, that the past, present and future are equally real – does that have a role to play here?

This book is at once a suspenseful mystery and a thought provoking enquiry into deep matters of the mind and of time itself. It doesn’t seek to provide the answers but it does ask interesting questions. Thoroughly absorbing.

I wanted this to be better than it is. It's an intriguing, unsettling story, depicting the spread of a previously unknown sleeping sickness in a small American town. The descriptions are handled very well; there's an almost unbearable eeriness about the town, especially as the illness takes tighter hold. But as the story went on, I started to feel like the plot was a vehicle for the descriptions, not the other way around as it should be. There are a lot of characters and we kept cycling between them at speed, so I felt like I never really got to know anyone. And while most of the reactions seemed reasonable, I was surprised at the lack of violence. There's one riot at a store, caused by someone collapsing, and one mention of people swarming a food delivery. Nothing at all about people looting, breaking into empty houses to look for supplies, anything like that. Granted there were soldiers around, but they can't have been everywhere all the time.

These are small complaints, though, for a book that overall was excellent.


I received a free proof copy in exchange for an honest review.

This novel is very different from my usual reading choices, but I was pleased that I decided to give this a try. It opens in a small college in Santa Lora, California. A young girl feels unwell, goes to sleep and simply doesn’t wake… Before long, the sleeping sickness is beginning to overtake others in her dorm and, as others fall under the spell, we begin to meet the many characters in this book, both from the college and the town, nearby.

There is Mei, a young student who has found she doesn’t fit in to her new life. Ben and Annie, two young professors at the college, who have just had a new, baby daughter. Catherine, a psychiatrist who is called to the town, and who leaves her young daughter behind. Sara and her sister, Libby, whose father is a conspiracy theorist and survivalist and who are used to the world being slightly off kilter, as well as a cast of other characters that you will come to care about.

As time goes on, more and more people fall asleep and dream – but what is the purpose of these dreams, how is this sleeping sickness spreading and how will it end? This is very well written. The style of writing keeps you a little at a distance, so you see events unfold gradually and are then pulled in. I am pleased that I took a chance on something different, as I enjoyed this very much. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

Shades of Stephen King, in both the lyrical descriptions and many interweaving characters, in this novel about a strange plague hitting a small town. I was riveted, following along as they try ... and many ultimately fail ... to keep themselves and their loved ones healthy. It's always fascinating seeing how different people react to situations like this and I didn't see anything that rang false to me; all the reactions seemed very probable. I'll be watching out for more novels by this author as I think there are many successful novels to come for her.


Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way.

This is beautifully and masterfully written. Set in an American college town, it follows multiple characters - a lonely student, new parents and their baby, two young girls living with their doomsday prepper father, etc - as a strange sleeping virus quickly spreads across the population. It's always difficult to write a book featuring so many characters without the narrative feeling disjointed, but Karen Thompson Walker does it brilliantly: it feels like the reader is floating over the town, taking in the bird's eye view of what's going on, before dipping down to check in on certain characters. The one downside for me was that, perhaps because there were multiple characters, I didn't engage with any of them quite as much as I could have. At points it felt slightly unbalanced, too: I would have liked more about Nathaniel and Henry, and Mei, who is so relatable and brilliantly drawn, felt conspicuously absent from the ending, especially after spending so much time with her and Matthew earlier on. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this. Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the ARC!

The Dreamers offers a wholly unique novel filled with eloquence, tenderness and a medical mystery. I dithered between a 4 and 5 star rating but the dazzling quality of the writing alone deserves 5, so 5 it is!

In The Dreamers a mysterious sleeping sickness takes hold in a small college town in California. One moment a student seems fine, the next he/she is asleep with no way to rouse them. It seems contagious, jumping from student to student, but by what means? Quarantines are established but things, eventually, get out of hand and life changes drastically for anyone caught in Santa Lora.

The scope of this novel delivers more than just an unusual survival situation. It is extremely personal as we delve into the thoughts and fears of a handful of inhabitants within Santa Lora. Their stories are touchingly conveyed to the reader in beautifully constructed prose. The situation being so strange sparks panic and the fear is captured perfectly in the pages of this book. Not just fear, though, but for some a sense of duty leads them to great heights.

Where this book is heading is anyone's guess but the journey is entirely worthwhile. The characters are fully formed and people you would care about. I felt such a kinship with all the people we tracked through this crisis. I shared their hopes, tears and concerns and could not wait to see how this special novel ended. I loved it! Completely fresh and a great reading experience.

The Dreamers is a story about a town whose residents fell asleep and wouldn't wake up. This sleep sickness was caused by a virus and soon affected everyone-child, teenager and adult.

This sleeping sickness started with a college girl named Kara, and then it spread through the dorm Kara lived in. While some die in their sleep as Kara did, some are alive with dreams of their past or their future.

So, the writing was in the third person and it was descriptive and lyrical. The writing was in tune with the scenarios in the book but the ending left me unsatisfied. I would have loved to see more of Mei in the book and I think that would have made this book a little better. There were so many things going on with the multiple characters cast that it left me feeling confused and irritated.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC.