The pace was quite slow, and the storytelling from so many different perspectives made it hard to realize what was actually going on.

The Dreamers creates a world that has the reader wondering if this could happen. This story could happen to anyone in any town. There have been stories of the possibility of time dilation drugs happening, but never another method that causes it. What an amazing thing that could happen and the life that you could live in a matter of days, weeks, or months.

I'd been looking for a book to break me out of a serious reading slump and was so happy to be immediately engaged with The Dreamers. Ms. Walker waves a wonderfully creepy novel, exploring the realities of a town coming apart in California. For my notes, I thought the pacing was a bit odd, as the end felt especially rushed, but I did love the focus the book placed on the reader's own time and space.

3/5
I loved Station Eleven but The Dreamers is slightly different compared to that.

My favorite parts in The Dreamers were the beginning and the ending - the beginning was narrated very vividly when the 'sleeping sickness' descended upon the town, and the ending was wrapped up with some mystery to it.

There wasn't really any plot, and was largely based on how this disease affected the town and its people.

The novel put me in a dream-like state, floating around Santa Lora, California, observing the quiet yet disturbing chaos that surrounded it. As much as I enjoyed the setting, I felt the characters were hard to follow. There were so many of them. But reading on my kindle helped me do a quick 'search' to help me recall.

I'd love for the science part to be explored a little deeper - why were the dreamers chosen, why it happened to them, and how; and not leaving it as a total mystery.

What I liked most though, towards the end of the novel, was that it left me with some food for thought - are dreams of the future or the past? How real are they? Are they connected to the present? Are we living in a dream right now?

A notable novel throughout.

Thank you Random House and Netgalley for the opportunity to read the ARC. A full review will be posted on my blog, Twitter and Goodreads on publication day.

A college freshman is flattened after a hard night of partying. The trouble is, she doesn't wake up no matter what measures her friends take. She is the first of The Dreamers to succumb to deep sleep in an isolated town. As more and more characters are introduced to illustrate the far reaching consequences of the condition, what Walker does so well is to present characters so vividly, creating their inner lives and the puzzling spread of the virus so authentic, it is hard to look away. She pays attention mostly to those awake, in their examination of their loved ones and their relationships which in several cases they regret not appreciating before the "fall." In this aspect, The Dreamers reminded me, yes, of Station Eleven, as has been pointed out by others, in the regret felt at a huge, irretrievable loss. But I was also reminded of The Leftovers, for that very same reason. Walker points out that a disease often reveals the best and worst of our hidden selves. This in itself is reason to appreciate this book.

The Dreamers is a lyrical account of the everyday actions and choices that cause a fictional pandemic in which victims fall asleep and can't be woken, while experiencing intense dream activity; the human emotions and costs of such an event; and how choices become taken from us during high-fear times. This is a well-written novel, albeit lacking a certain amount of narrative tension other that causing the reader to ask, "who will be the next victim?" With somewhat better characterization, this question might have been, "what characters do I care about, and how am I invested in their status?" I was made uncomfortable by the author's decision to have a sleeper become pregnant, resulting in the birth of her child while she sleeps, without anyone in the story questioning the woman's desires; and certain aspects of characterization that I felt were stereotyping.

I really enjoyed Walker's first novel, The Age of Miracles, and I'm happy to report, this new novel did not disappoint. In the imagined town of Santa Lora, students at a small college fall ill to a mysterious sleeping sickness. Santa Lora is a California town, and I couldn't help but think of Lake Arrowhead, but instead of a quaint resort town, Santa Lora is an isolated mountain town filled with academics and support people for the small college- with a small, limited hospital, a small population, and a small town feel. Unlike her first novel, Walker introduces a variety of different characters here, which really flesh out the story. She's good at giving you just enough information to let you know who people are, and your imagination fills in the blanks. But this is truly a page turner--you really want to know what happens next with these people and the contagion infiltrating their small town.

I was excited to have an advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley and it immediately began reading it. This novel infected my dreams. I love the angle Ms Walker has taken, using the mythology and study of sleep and dreams to truly expand this sleeping sickness--something that sounds medieval on paper--into a true threat to our modern society, but keeping that mysterious aura, reminding us that dreams are something that are still largely unknowable and understandable by science and modern medicine.

I devoured this whole novel in less than 24 hours, so I guess you can say I liked it. I was initially drawn to the speculative fiction aspect of the novel, but I mostly got sucked in by the pensive yet down-to-earth prose and the way the large cast of characters were created without a heavy hand. I'm also an easy sell for fiction taking place in a small California college town, "Santa Lora," a mix of Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. (I also appreciated reading a novel set around academia that isn't unbearably pretentious.)
I thought this was a stronger/more mature novel than Age of Miracles, so if you liked that, check this one out.


Thanks for the ARC, Netgalley.

Thank you NetGalley for the free ARC.

I loved "The age of miracles". This book about a mysterious illness befalling a small college town did not quite hit the same spot for me. It was a good story, but somehow I did not find the characters as enjoyable.

I really enjoyed The Dreamers a lot. It took me a little while to get into the story, but once I did, I found it to be mesmerizing and wonderfully written. The title is perfect because there is so much that is left to interpretation but it really works and I appreciated the "dreamlike" tone to the book. The premise is that a dorm of college girls begin to mysteriously fall into a deep sleep- basically, an apocalypse is happening without people being fully conscious of it. People are forced to examine their dreams as if they are reality and then come to grips with what is happening. The ending wasn't my favorite, but did a good job finishing things off. If you enjoyed Age of Miracles, chances are you will enjoy this one as well.

3 out of 5 stars for The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read and provide my honest review this book.

This book is something like a literary k-hole. A slightly slow start gives way to some intense urgent need to move forward with the story and for the reader to finish the book, whatever the outcome.

But during the reading of this my brain actually hurt at times thinking about the plot, the sickness, the possibilities, the dreams, reality versus alternate realities. What is the reality? Which one of these states are we actually living in? Is it different for everyone? Are our realities made up only of other people who are currently dreaming at the same time as well?

Halfway through reading I worried the ending of this book would not suffice. I was wrong. There is no neat and tidy package here but more of an open ended presentation. Take from it what you will, and leave the rest for the other dreamers.

I absolutely love this author's voice. She has a way of talking about world shattering, larger than life catastrophes in a quiet, subdued way. To capture how life goes on while everything falls apart around you. The quiet side of disaster. Beautiful.

I was really looking forward to reading The Dreamers, since I LOVED The Age of Miracles. I found the idea of life needing to go on despite the likelihood that it is the end of the world interesting. I especially loved it through the eyes of Julia. The book is a stunner. This one fell a little flat for me.
It seemed that this second book was an effort to create a similar story where something big (but limited) changed and everything follows as a result of that. In this case a sleeping sickness starts spreading through a small isolated college town in California.
It follows several characters: a couple of college kids, two young girls with their overly-prepared-for-the-end-of-the-world father, a young couple with their newborn, etc. etc. The sleepers seem to infect one another and groups of people fall to sleep at the same time. People panic.
I think the problem for me was this contained disaster didn't have the benefit of a single point of view. I couldn't get close enough to any of the characters to feel deeply about their circumstances. Not a whole lot happens to keep the plot moving forward (view spoiler)
Despite Karen Thompson Walker's beautiful descriptive writing, I never really connected with this book. Read The Age of Miracles, though. It is so so good.
Thank you to Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was given an advanced reader’s in exchange for an honest review

This book was able to present a unique dystopian concept and still be a well written narrative with fleshed out characters. A good surprise

In a voice as expansive and beautifully controlled as the voice of The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker once again creates a wholly new world out of a familiar landscape. In a drought-stricken California, college girls grow drowsy, and then they begin to fall asleep. And then: the dreams. How do we protect ourselves and the ones we love not only from inexplicable outside forces, but also from our own worst instincts? Walker made me a fan with The Age of Miracles. With The Dreamers, she's gained a disciple: everyone should read this book.

Thanks for the early review copy!

I recommend this novel to fans of literary fiction. It was well-written and interesting novel. I mainly picked it because of the cover.

This is an eerily disconcerting novel and once you finish it you will never look at your dreams the same way again.

A small college town becomes the center of an unknown virus that causes many of the inhabitants to fall into a deep sleep and not wake up. It soon becomes an epidemic of huge proportion and as more people fall prey to its effect it causes mass confusion, fear and hysteria. The victims appear to be dreaming while in this unconscious, comatose state....but what are their dreams about? Will they ever wake up again, and if they do what will their dreams say?

This one will make you think about the ways of the mind and if I were you, I might want to keep the light on.

This was one my most highly anticipated upcoming books because I loved the author's first book, Age of Miracles. I liked this one too, although maybe not as much as AoM? I thought the story moved along really quickly and definitely held my interest but I guess the premise wasn't quite as intriguing to me. I did really like some of the plot twists and didn't see them coming, and I especially liked the story of one of the first girls to go to sleep that was revealed at the very end.

I agree with another reviewer who called this eventual realization of an apocalyptic event as a "slow-paclypse" and for me the tone read like a "gentle fever nightmare." There is no major disaster or pandemic, but instead a slow progression of events where there is no ensuring panic with an acceptance of how life is changing. In this case, an epidemic of people suddenly falling asleep and not waking up no matter what actions are used to rouse them slowly envelops a small college town that is eventually quarantined.

But what's most interesting about this story is how dreaming among the "sleepers" is utilized, and the ending was haunting. In the reader's guide, Thompson states that writing about dreams in fiction is difficult as they have no “discernible logic.” This apt as I am often confounded by how illogical yet totally acceptable action in dreams can be. [Note: the quote is from a reading copy that has not been finalized.]

Fans of literary novels involving an apocalypse or dystopia such as Peter Heller's The Dog Stars and Mandel's Station Eleven may want to give this a whirl when published in January 2019.

Thanks to the publisher for the advance reading copy.
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A virus takes over a small California town. People fall asleep and stay asleep. The characters we meet and care about, a couple and their newborn baby, a couple of college students, two old men, perhaps the saddest story, and one young girl who sleeps for a year while her unborn baby grows and is born.
Those who awake tell of their dreams, were they dreams of the past or the future.
This is totally a character driven story, beautifully written, and worth reading. Enjoy.