Beautifully written story that flowed and was easy to read, without unnecessary story lines or descriptions.
The Dreamers takes place in this small town,Santa Lora, California, where we meet the different characters of the story, who are all somehow related to the college, where this mysterious sleeping sickness first starts. We meet Mei and Rebecca, both college girls, the janitor and her two daughters, their next door neighbours and professors, Ben and Annie with their newborn, Nathaniel, another professor. And finally Catherine, who is a visiting
doctor. I have really enjoyed learning about their lives and how they coped with the events and the aftermaths. They were all well portrayed without dwelling too much in little details. I could picture myself in this town, with these people.
The story, while followed multiple characters, was very easy to follow, there was no confusion. It left me wanting to know more about what happened to them all in the years to come.
Beautiful story, definitely recommended. Makes you think while still mainting that light read feel.
Thank you for netgalley and Scribner for my free copy to read an review!

This book was great, its everywhere I know, and do you really need another person telling you how great it is- YES you do.
It’s a fresher dystopian idea where a small town becomes inflicted with a virus, but the suffers simply fall asleep, (how very Disney).
It’s greatness however is Kate’s writing, I loved how she’s sets the POV, how she describes the unfolding chaos, it conjured movie scene vibes.
And I steamed through it in like two days, I love a book that I whip through because it’s amazing.
If you were a fan of The Immoralist, Stations Eleven, that sort of contemporary fiction then I would highly recommend this.

I was engrossed in this unusual story of a sleeping epidemic and how it affects a small town population. It’s a descriptive, pacy book with believable and diverse characters whom the reader gets to know and sympathise with. At times, very emotional and, at times quite uplifting. I’d recommend it to anyone.

A novel, soon to be hitting our British shelves, that follows the lives – and dreams – of a handful of people living in the fictional town of Santa Lora, after a mysterious virus slips into each of its residents, causing them to fall into a deep, unshakeable sleep.

'She has seen this kind of thing before – how one girl can sometimes feel the feelings of another, a different kind of contagion, the way a yawn sometimes jumps from mouth to mouth.'

Dreams and the sleep in which they often stem from, have always been a topic of fascination for us all. And this book was everything I expected it to be. A collection of intimately observed strangers, living and struggling beside the ominous weight of a sleeping virus. The question of who might fall ill next, and if they will ever wake up, whistled through this novel – and I think the author handled that spool of thread with care, letting out just enough to keep me bated.

I will say, that in my opinion, the book was a too long. Condensed a little, it could have even worked well as a punchy short story. Its excess length wasn’t enough for me to abandon it, I might add, but the middle certainly sagged with a weight I felt was unnecessary. In some ways, it birthed a certain realism into the plot, and prolonged the dramatic tension as the Santa Lora virus spread … but overall, if it were slightly leaner, I might have rated it higher.

Out of the handful of characters I spent time with throughout this book, I only felt drawn to two … Annie and Ben.

'They’ve slept the brief shoulder sleep of so many car rides and train rides and planes, the beach sleep in Mexico, those sunburns on their honeymoon, the sleep of bad dreams and good dreams, the dreams they’ve shared and the dreams they haven’t, and all the dreams they never remembered and never would, so many of which have travelled through their minds while their two heads have lain not more than a few inches apart. And now, for the past three weeks, they’ve been sleeping this new kind of sleep, clipped but deep – such steep efficiency – because who knew when the baby might open her eyes and call out?'

I found their experiences most compelling, and if the story had revolved entirely around them, I wouldn’t have minded – it is these two newbie parents, and their little one, that I will think of when I pick this book from the shelf at work.

I did also enjoy the sections spent with Catherine, despite their brevity, and her phone calls home, to a daughter marooned with her babysitter. I felt very little for the remaining cast … which is a shame, and contributed to the lengthy amount of time I spent reading the book. I found, regrettably, it was often one that I could put down and come back to.

'—and in anonymous beds in anonymous houses now scattered throughout Santa Lora – the dreamers go on dreaming.'

One last note on the characters: I did enjoy how, despite them being strangers to one another, their paths would intertwine during the events that unfolded. I felt this was handled with care. The way one character will see the other, across the street, or on television … and although they’ve never met and don’t recognise them – you, as the reader, do. This kept me engaged and added an additional layer of tension, too. Moments when I’d stop, mid-scene, and think, Wait, I know who they’ve just seen … I do enjoy stories that play with perspective like this. Ones that show two sides of a coin, without bias.

I will be checking out Walker’s other novel, The Age of Miracles, as I’ve heard many bright things from it. The Dreamers, unfortunately, did not live up to my personal expectations – so count this as my penny in the pool of mixed reviews.

So I heard this was a Shakespeare retelling and I knew I had to request it...

This is part adventure, part love story, part horror and part what it means to live- and to not. I enjoyed the plot and the dialogue- it kept me in suspense and my heart was literally in rhythm with the action.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a strange and unique read!!

A most fascinating story where all the central characters are asleep! This is a compulsive read that raises issues of mass hysteria and panic in a school setting,when students fall into an unnatural sleep from which it is impossible to awake them. It is observed that the sleeping students are having dreams,as shown by their rapid eye movements and it is hoped that they will wake up gradually without any ill effects.
When some do wake up,they show opposite tendencies to how they were before. Those who were shy become outgoing and confident. Henry,who was confused,becomes alert and talkative whereas his partner Nathaniel becomes sadly more confused. One father is adamant that there was a fire,but this event happens after his pronouncement,but in the very location that he predicted.
This story raises issues of fear and panic,especially amongst the young students,who have only recently left home and are out of their comfort zone. What is reassuring is that there are real strengths of character being exhibited, solidarity as their school is quarantined,affection and concern for all the affected students and their parents, deep friendships are made and selfless sacrifices shown as they not only care for their immediate friendship groups,but also take an interest in and help those in distress in the community. All elements that are supposed to be lacking in today's internet groups come to the fore,and although this is fiction,it does give hope for the future.
I considered this book to be a contemporary Sci-Fi novel or Young Adult fiction,and I surprised myself by really enjoying this book.
I have rated this as a four star read,and have recommended this to my daughter,who teaches in a school,as to future reading material.

The Dreamers begins with a young woman student falling ill in a college dorm, with a strange illness whose victims fall asleep and can’t be woken. Soon the infection spreads.

My first thought was this was going to be one of those stories where an epidemic among adolescent females is a metaphor for mass hysteria or repressed sexuality or whatever, but The Dreamers is much more interesting than that. In its dreamlike, haunting prose it follows a number of characters in the small college town, each with their own issues.

We have the college professors with their newborn (ironically caught in their own state of unreality caused by sleep deprivation) and the survivalist determined to protect his family at all costs – but how will his food stores and his weapons ward off an infectious disease? We see the people who help the sick, walking towards danger rather than away from it and consider what drives them.

One thing that emerges about the disease is that, although the patients sleep deeply, their brains show heightened activity. They are dreaming. Through the different experiences of the characters, and with a particular emphasis on babies and birth, the author asks questions about what it means to dream and to create, and whether waking or sleeping is more real. It made me think of Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep, in which he suggests, given the powerful effects of sleeping, it might make more sense to question why we wake up.

The Dreamers is a very open book, in the sense that it introduces a wide cast of characters and touches on a lot of themes without providing an explicit thesis on any one. Some might find that unsatisfactory, might want a stronger steer on what the author is trying to say about the nature of sleep, or society, or birth, or family life. For me, this book, like a dream, doesn’t come with a neat resolution, but is rich in imagery and ideas and leaves you feeling reflective and profoundly moved.

It starts with one college student, a girl who wont wake up no matter how hard you try and spreads through a city. Their eyes all move in REM sleep – they are dreaming but what about and will they ever wake up?

The Dreamers reminded me very much of the first half of Stephen King’s The Stand – certainly not a bad thing as it is one of my favourite books! I really enjoy the suspense of getting to know certain characters really well and then having them taken by the sickness. I also really liked how you can see the virus spreading from contact of individual characters which made every interaction feel sinister in a way. The chapters switch perspective to a few key, very different characters in the town which gives you a nice overall view of the outbreak. There were a few times I felt like screaming at the characters for making stupid decisions but they were all actually probably quite realistic reactions to the events. In the end the story is much more character-driven than an overarching ‘apocalypse’ style story which was refreshing.

Karen Thompson Walker’s writing style is intelligent and beautiful – there’s references in there to science, philosophy, history and politics which meld seamlessly into the narrative. The last third of the book pulled me in so much I couldn’t go to sleep until I’d finished it – and then I found it hard to sleep afterwards just in case I didn’t wake up again! I was a little worried as I watched the percentages tick down to the end about how the story would wrap itself up but I really enjoyed the ending – it’s a good stand alone story which I always appreciate! I also liked that some things were kept a mystery even at the very end which leads you to question and keeps the story in your mind long after you’ve put the book down.

Overall The Dreamers is a beautifully sinister read. Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster UK and Scribner for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book, just as I loved Walker's last book The Age of Miracles. Will be giving it a great review on my channel!

My thanks to Simon and Schuster UK/Scribner for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Dreamers’.

In the small town of Santa Lora, California a mysterious sleeping sickness has afflicted students in the local college. It begins with just a few but quickly spreads beyond the campus. A quarantine is set in place and medical experts are baffled. In addition to the profound sleep those affected appear to be dreaming and monitors pick up high brain activity.

I have long been a fan of the thrillers of Michael Crichton and similar, so was quite enthusiastic about this novel’s premise. Karen Thompson Walker focuses on how the disease effects a core group through a series of vignettes that captures events and their experiences with the illness. Some had more appeal than others, which is quite normal with an ensemble cast of characters.

Online conspiracy theories including Fake News, Big Pharma, and accusations of crisis actors swirl on the periphery updating the response to the crises from earlier novels in this type of medical outbreak thriller.

I would classify ‘The Dreamers’ as character driven rather than being action based. There is a lyrical, dreamlike ambiance to the narrative, which I found very compelling.

The dreamscapes of those effected and the boundaries between waking and sleeping are also explored with some philosophical ideas woven in.

The line from Edgar Allan Poe “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream” came to my mind often while reading.

It is the type of novel that I would recommend for reading groups as it has a number of levels to explore and plenty of material for discussion.

You crave sleep—desperately. Your eyelids are heavy, threatening to shut from the weight of your exhaustion. But you can’t allow your eyes to close. This unidentifiable disease is spreading fast, and you’re afraid you won’t ever wake up.

Karen Thompson Walker’s masterful The Dreamers, tells the story of a strange virus that has descended upon a small California town. A virus that sends the town’s residents into a deep sleep from which they cannot wake. The virus spreads swiftly, sending those who are still awake into a panic. College students worry that when their newfound friends close their eyes, they will never wake again. Parents attempt to quell the panic that swells inside them every time they put their precious newborn baby to sleep. Children fear that their parents will fall victim to this virus and will no longer wake to care for them.

Scientists flock to the area in the hopes of finding the cause, and thus, the cure, but no one is able to determine where the virus comes from, nor how to stop it. An entire town teeters on the brink of destruction, of succumbing to a sleep that never ends.

This is the first novel I have read by Karen Thompson Walker, and it certainly won’t be the last. The dystopian nature of The Dreamers is not normally one I find intriguing. I don’t need to imagine the world as any crazier than it already is. Nevertheless, the story of a town plagued by sleep immediately interested me.

The novel focuses on a few characters, all central to the story due to the different groups of people they represent—parents, children, scientists, and young adults. We follow their journeys and discover how this sickness affects them; how they overcome it, and how they are defeated by it.

There is a subtle, staccato tone to the writing that creates a dreamy, disjointed and increasingly tense atmosphere. We are only allowed to know as much as the characters know, which means we remain dazed, confused and mildly terrified — in the best way — throughout most of the book.

The Dreamers is a stirring work of fiction that does not disappoint. It confounds and thrills, delights and deceives, and plays on one of our greatest fears—that once we go to sleep, we may never wake up.

This was something a little different to the books I normally read but I am trying to read outside my comfort zone and it looked so enticing from the blurb that I thought I'd give it a try and I wasn't disappointed.
Set in a college town, we watch as one by one, the students fall asleep and don't wake up. The number of these sleepers rises and panic ensues and experts are called to give opinion. The two is cut off as they try to get to the bottom of what is happening. Things are progressively harder for those still awake as they try and keep going with their lives but, at the same time, worried they will be next.
I usually read crime fiction, psychological thrillers mostly, and these sorts of books rely on punches and twists to keep a reader's attention. This book was completely different from that and, at times, I did wonder what I was getting into as it was just a snapshot of life in a troubled town with people just doing what they do. But then it struck me how powerful and character driven what I was reading really was. How much of an impact it was having on me. All without the tricks and tactics that crime books employ to suck me in. I was completely taken over by what was happening to the sleepers and worrying about them and also the rest of the population who had to fight for the basics they need as the town gets cut off. How these people also try to protect themselves from what is happening and how scared they became.
I do have a few reservations about some of the things that weren't quite wrapped up enough for me by the time I got to the end of the book. Yes, I have kind of formulated my own answers to some of my questions but there are still a few gaps. I'm not sure whether there will be more coming from this story in future books from this author or if this is how it all ends, unresolved but just being. Not everything in life is always explained satisfactorily, some things we just have to accept. After all, I think there are more important messages to take from the story told within.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

The Dreamers is Karen Thompson Walker's follow-up to the gorgeous The Age of Miracles, and a substantial step up, in my opinion. In this novel, a strange sleeping sickness sweeps through a Californian college town, leaving panic and confusion in its wake. In the beginning some of the victims die; none of them wake up. As the sickness takes hold, Thompson Walker dips into the lives of many different characters, among them Mei, the college room-mate of the first victim, as she deals with fear, suspicion and alienation. We meet a pair of college professors, new to the town, struggling with their marriage and a new baby. There are a pair of sisters and their survivalist father. An older professor haunted by his alzheimers-struck partner.

This symphonic approach worked beautifully for me: while we see more of some individual stories than others, in effect, this novel is about the town as a whole's experience of the epidemic. It's the town as a living, breathing (sleeping) entity. In this I was reminded of Jon McGregor's Reservoir 13, another book I loved recently, although the timescale of that novel is much greater. And as with Reservoir 13, I didn't want it to end. Thompson Walker's fairy-tale narrative style could have distanced the reader, but for me it had the opposite effect. I was completely caught up in the ups and downs of the various characters' lives; it was one of those books that you carry around, reading in every spare moment, until you're finished and you have to let it go.

In a nutshell: beautiful, heartrending, for fans of Jon McGregor and Emily St John Mandel.

There's something so soothingly fairytale-like about Karen Thompson Walker's writing - even when her subject matter is unnervingly dystopian. Her new novel THE DREAMERS takes place in the small Californian town of Santa Lora where, one day, a student at the university falls asleep and doesn't wake up. Soon more students start to fall into an endless sleep, and as the mysterious "sickness" spreads, events worsen and a cordon is put in place, a full-scale emergency is raised.

The book follows a cast of main characters, from a newborn baby to a conspiracy-theorist widower, a lovelorn student to a ageing university professor. Explanations for the sickness are sought, cures are desperately searched for, and at times the town residents who remain awake start to feel like they have been abandoned by their government.

As with her first book, THE AGE OF MIRACLES (a wonderful exploration of what happens to a community when the earth's rotation starts to slow), Ms Thompson Walker has a very storyteller-like quality to her writing. This may mean that if you're more a fan of the "show, don't tell" method, then you may not be quite as keen on the ratio of exposition to dialogue. This style can very occasionally make the action seem more passive than active, but it's this quality that lends a (somewhat appropriately) dreamy tone to the story.

I have enjoyed both of Ms Thompson Walker's books. She writes with a beautifully intricate style and takes a softer, honey-lensed look at these apocalyptic storylines than many other authors these days, and THE DREAMERS is no exception.

A soft, blurred fever-dream of a book. I read it in two gripped, voracious sittings and didn't stop thinking about it for days afterwards - mainly, unsurprisingly, at night, right before I fell asleep.

I was attracted to this one by all the praise in the early reviews, and am really glad it lived up to the hype!

Santa Lora, California is amidst a health crisis of unforeseen proportions - people keep falling asleep and not waking up. The epidemic starts at a local university, then spreads rapidly across the town. We follow a host of characters - Mei (a college student), a young couple of professors and their newborn baby, two young sisters whose father has been preparing for the end of days - and see how the disaster impacts on their lives.

Thompson Walker tells this eerie story in prose which is beautiful and almost dreamlike in itself, and as a result I found The Dreamers really hard to put down. Interesting that the novel opens with a quote from Jose Saramago's Blindness, as I noticed a number of similarities (in the atmosphere of the story) between the two novels.

I really enjoyed this book and I’m still not entirely sure why. I read until 3am and then continued as soon as I woke. I’m guessing it was partly because I found the writing so beautiful and partly because I find human behaviour fascinating and am always interested in seeing how people respond differently to similar circumstances.

It starts at the college. A student goes to sleep and cannot be woken. We follow a variety of people: college students, professors, medical professionals, new parents and preppers as they navigate the progression of a previously unknown illness that’s sweeping through their geographically isolated town.

I felt as though I was watching snapshots of peoples’ lives from a distance. Maybe it was because the narrative circled around so many different people or maybe I failed to make connections I should have but, while I found the writing beautiful in many places, I didn’t feel anything for the people whose lives were being so greatly affected. I liked some of the characters but wasn’t affected when their lives were turned upside down.

I also never felt the expected sense of urgency while I was reading. Perhaps this was intentional as the writing did have a dreamlike quality at times, although I’d been more prepared for a nightmarish feel. The narrative just seemed to waft over me and it read more like a series of character studies than the drama I had hoped for.

While I didn’t feel, I did think. I enjoyed pondering the nature of reality, consciousness, what it means to sleep and dream, how trees communicate with one another and various philosophical debates that reminded me of when I was at university. Thinking my way through this book seemed to help distract me from the fact that a lot less happens in this book than I’d expected.

I spent a lot of the book waiting to find out what the dreamers were dreaming and, while I did get some answers and there were some satisfying conclusions, I was also left with a bunch of unanswered questions. Some people who seemed integral to the story simply faded away without resolution. Rebecca’s story, which I was initially quite interested in, became tedious and annoyed me. Then there was the psychiatrist who I expected to add a lot to the story but didn’t really leave an impression on me.

I think what really kept me glued to the pages were the outcasts. I’m a sucker for people who for whatever reason just don’t fit in and this book had several that I loved. I could have easily done away with a few other characters to spend more time with Mei, Sara and Libby.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster UK, for the opportunity to read this book.

I think that the best word for this book is 'plodding'. It may seem like a weird choice, but hear me out on this one. Set in the California town of Santa Lora, the novel follows a mysterious virus that puts those infected to sleep. They dream vividly as they sleep, but nothing can rouse them from this strange unconsciousness. Much like her previous novel 'The Age of Miracles', this book is very procedural; we see the intertwining of narratives from multiple characters as the response to the virus unfolds. You feel trapped alongside the characters. The writing is claustrophobic, yet somehow manages to capture the feeling of watching the event unfold on television and witnessing it at the same time.

Though this book is perhaps not as engaging as 'The Age of Miracles' it has a similarly dreamy sense to it, for lack of a better term. The writing is straightforward and to-the-point, which makes it feel real on so many occasions. And yet, it's chock full of emotion, which is amazing considering the book is about people who are asleep.

However, this book is hard to read because it's not an action packed book. You'd expect a book about a killer virus to have some seriously thrilling moments, but we just seem to skip over all of them in favour of extra characters. I struggled on numerous occasions to want to read this book because of just how slowly things happen. The pacing is snail-like and, while this works in the story's favour sometimes, overall it makes for a pretty prolonged narrative.

I’m catching up on eARC’s this month and this one was another stunner. So beautifully written, you are transported to Santa Lora in California where a college girl goes to bed one night and doesn’t wake up. And then another. And then another. Through test after test after test, they sleep on.

Before long, more and more people are falling asleep and the doctors realise that this is something different. Something new.

This is my first book by Walker and I love her writing style. Written in the third person, The Dreamers has a storytelling feel to it. As if you were listening to a tale around the campfire late one night by a narrator looking back on the events and sharing them with the world.

The descriptive text won’t be for everyone and the detatched narration definitely takes away from some of the drama, but the rhythm this style of writing gives The Dreamers is wonderful in itself. It’s hard to describe why I loved it so much but it definitely has something to do with the way Walker writes which is nothing like I’ve ever read before. Utterly captivating.

Slow moving and captivating, the story is interesting. I enjoyed it and would like to read more by this author.