Like other reviews I have seen for The Dreamers, this book started out really strong, but fell flat for me in the end. However, unlike other reviewers, I don't think it was the lack of a definitive ending that made this book fall flat for me. I think there were maybe one too many characters to follow, and we bounced back and forth between so many people, I found it hard to become attached to each character. I did enjoy this book, and I would reccommend it to people who are fans of Station Eleven, and slow-burn apocolpytic novels.

I wasn't sure what I would think about this before reading as reviews were a bit divided - people seemed to think it was amazing or extremely over-hyped. I don't want to say too much and I know this won't be for everyone, but this book was definitely for me. This is detailed, drippy prose done right. I loved the format and how the storytelling weaved together, always jumping between a variety of narrators and switching between short and longer chapters. Some books are about the destination, but this one was all about the journey for me. Here for it!

I really enjoyed this book - how the stories of the characters were woven together but the end was such a disappointment. Spoiler alert - it was important for me to know WHY this all happened and there was never an explanation. Readers are taken on a journey with all these characters who become sick and we never know why.

While I loved the way the story was written, I didn’t really connect to any of the characters because the narrative jumped around a lot and for me that left a bit of a disconnect. That being said, it is still a great story that will draw in a lot of readers and keep them reading. The characters that Walker created each have a unique personality and part of the epidemic to highlight. I felt the book did a great job of bringing the reality of the epidemic to light and showing what would really happen in a case like this. It all felt very realistic. I just wish there had been a couple less characters so we could really connect with them better.

I was pulled in by the language, and stayed for the story. This may not be a new premise in the sci-fi world of books, but that didn't matter to me as this is a departure from my usual genres, and, the idea that a contagious disease of any kind could happen and then spread so quickly is something which both fascinates and terrifies me.
I will definitely be recommending this book to our library patrons.

I am really curious to hear what others think of this one. I, personally, devoured in over the course of three days - I thought the plot and pacing were really intriguing, and as with AGE OF MIRACLES, the writing was fantastic. I am not totally sure if I loved the ending, so maybe I'd knock off half a star or so, but the book was so imaginative and sucked me in so adeptly that it remains a five star read for now. :) Really looking forward to reading what others think of this one.

The writing in this book is magnificent and I loved the plot, the characters, and the whole twist on an apocalypse, mass hysteria, human will and survival.

However, I sometimes felt like I was reading in circles which got irritating and did not always make for the most compelling story.

This book was a beautiful meditation on dreams, times, and consciousness while being completely accessible and riveting. Highly recommended.

‘…so much of this life will remain always beyond her understanding, as obscure as the landscapes of someone else’s dreams.’

In Southern California, a small town becomes the epicenter of a strange contagion that causes people to sleep indefinitely. Some won’t ever open their eyes again. There’s confusion and hysteria regarding how it’s spread, how to contain it, and meanwhile, more and more people fall victim to the seemingly unavoidable illness. But while it appears that these individuals are sleeping peacefully, inside, their minds are more active than any recorded human brain in history. But what exactly do they dream of, in this inescapable slumber? While they sleep, the waking ones are left to care for their bodies to ensure that one day it will be possible for them to wake again. As the day’s pass and questions remain unanswered, the dreamers begin to outnumber the ones that remain awake.

Karen Thompson Walker once again brings us a dystopian tale that is unsettling in its plausibility. The Dreamers shows us a glimpse at a multitude of individuals within this town without becoming overwhelming: the student that regrets leaving for college and hopes for a day when she’s able to go home, the parents with a newborn who fear falling victim and leaving their baby alone, the young girls that have always fended for themselves fine but now have no other choice when their father falls asleep. The focus on a variety of individuals manages to show the differences in how they react to the unknown by the different facets of their fear and builds on that frenzy of inner turmoil, not knowing what actions to take to avoid becoming the next victim. It’s when the reader is given a glimpse into the mind of a dreamer that you begin to wonder if these individuals are in fact “victims”.

I was a huge fan of Walker’s debut, The Age of Miracles, and I was thrilled to see her focus on another dystopian centered story. The Dreamers, however, takes a different route focusing on the philosophical aspects of the contagion rather the scientific reasoning behind it. This difference in focus, and Walker’s enchanting writing style, inevitably gives the story a dreamlike feel that pairs well with the feeling of disconnect these characters exude, quarantined within a town and simply waiting for the day that they too fall asleep and never wake. The Dreamers doesn’t necessarily end in ambiguity but it certainly lacks concrete answers that would normally be expected in novels of this ilk but are exactly what you’d expect in an actual dream. This story still manages to be incredibly satisfying as long as you’re willing to lose yourself in its slow, hypnotic rhythm.

Weird things are happening at the local university in Santa Lora, California. It all started with Rebecca, a student who stumbled home from a party and didn't wake up. Soon other students in her dorm fall asleep and don't wake up. One by one the students are leaving the dorm on stretchers and the local hospital is filling up. Doctors are baffled, what is causing the students to sleep? Soon it isn't just students being affected by this affliction. Hundreds, thousands of people in this small community are asleep with no end in sight. The hospital soon is closed to new patients and there are guards at the door. And then there are guards at the exits of the city. In one neighborhood the fear is real. Two young girls live with their father who works at the university as a janitor. Their new neighbors are transplants from New York City with a newborn baby. They all know that they are in the middle of a history-making epidemic when the nurse across the street commits suicide by leaving her gas oven on. People are terrified. Tanks are driving down the streets, helicopters are flying overhead. The grocery stores are nearly empty and people believe that this could be the end. Will they be able to find a cure before one small California town is completely overtaken by The Dreamers?

There is nothing better than finding a well written apocalyptic novel. The Dreamers doesn't go full-blown apocalyptic, but it is close. And that is good enough for me. Karen Thompson Walker writes an absolutely perfect novel. The chapters are short but more than adequate. We get to meet various people throughout the crisis in Santa Lora. We meet Mei, the roommate of "patient zero." She and Matt escape the gym where they are being quarantined to go on and help hundreds of people. Each of them carrying their own variety of guilt. We also meet Ben and Annie, new parents who are desperate to do anything for their baby girl. We also meet Catherine, the Psychiatrist who is called in to be sure that it isn't psychosomatic. And then there is Sarah and Libby. Two pre-teen girls who grew up with a father who was always prepared for the collapse of society. They don't know what to do when their own father falls ill. All of these characters have incredibly compelling stories, but it is Sarah and Libby that really tug on the heartstrings. As I always do when reading stories such as The Dreamers, I always wonder what I would do if I were a character in this story. I think that I would self-quarantine and find a way to keep myself from the outside world. All of this builds to a conclusion that seems natural and peaceful. Which may seem like a weird word to use for this kind of book, but it did seem peaceful.

Bottom Line - The Dreamers was perfect. Simply perfect. The characters are well developed, the writing is lyrical, and the story is engrossing. One not to miss!

Details:
The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
On Facebook
Pages: 320
Publisher: Random House Publishing
Publication Date: 1/15/19
Buy it Here!

The Dreamers is my first novel by Karen Thompson Walker and I hope to read more of her work. I thoroughly enjoyed this science fiction story mainly because it wasn't way out there.
I found it to be mysterious and fascinating.
The focus is on a small college town where its inhabitants contract a disease that causes long, unpreventable sleep and vivid dreams. It begins with college students then spreads to the community.
The Dreamers chronicles a multitude of diverse characters in the face of adversity. The authors descriptiveness and character development was profound.
A unique and thought-provoking story!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for an arc of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

It all starts with one college student falling asleep and not waking up. But the sleeping sickness quickly spreads through a small California town in Karen Thompson Walker’s unique and authentic dystopian thriller The Dreamers.

As the story progresses the reaction of the characters feels frighteningly real. People panic in a grocery store, but still have time for helpful gestures; business men and women trapped in the town wander aimlessly and are thankful for a helping hand; a father goes to great lengths to protect his newborn child and college students first panic and then volunteer to assist with the sick.

If you’ve ever wondered how you might react in a crisis, you’re likely to find some version of yourself among the characters in this novel. The Dreamers (digital galley, Random House) is a refreshing and exhilarating addition to disaster fiction.

Random House and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of The Dreamers. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

A mysterious illness threatens to topple a small town, after an outbreak at a local college spreads out of control. The descent into perpetual sleep is brisk, perplexing the doctors and nurses that are desperate to help those who are afflicted. With more answers than questions, what is the ultimate fate of the town and its people?

The biggest issue that I had with The Dreamers was its lack of direction. There was no real plot, as it was really just a sketch of a town and the response of those in charge to a crisis within its borders. No answers were ever given, leaving the book with an unfinished feeling. The Dreamers was a good concept, but the overall lack of conclusion was disappointing. For these reasons, I would be hesitant to recommend The Dreamers to other readers.

Dystopia is disquieting in Karen Thompson Walker's The Dreamers (Random House, digital galley), written in a lovely minor key. In her 2012 first novel The Age of Miracles, the end of the world as we know it was triggered by the slowing of the Earth's rotation and narrated by a California sixth-grader. The story was elegiac and intimate as the ordinary rites of adolescence continued in the face of global catastrophe. "We kids were not as afraid as we should have been. We were too young to be scared, too immersed in our own small worlds, too convinced of our own permanence.''

The focus is wider, the voice omniscient in The Dreamers as people in a small California town fall victim to a mysterious sleeping sickness. The first victims are college students who fall asleep after a night of partying and slide into comas. But then scattered townspeople and the health workers caring for them sicken, too, and the viral epidemic spreads so that within just a matter of weeks the area is quarantined. Walker moves in out of the dreams and lives of the infected and the still-well. Especially poignant are the two young girls left alone when their prepper father falls ill. Their basement is full of canned goods, and they try to maintain a semblance of normalcy, taking in stray pets. Next door is a young couple who monitor their newborn for symptoms after she is inadvertently exposed. Across town, two students come together as volunteers nursing dreamers in the college library.

Walker's tone is measured, almost hypnotic throughout. The result is a story as mysterious as a dream, as disturbing as a nightmare.

from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

A provocative and original novel. The final was unexpected. Excellent work!

#TheDreamers #NetGalley

A strange, baffling sleeping sickness had upended the fictitious city of Santa Lora, California. It started after a college party, a night of drinking Tequila from shared shot glasses. Kara, feeling flu-like, left the party early returning to her dorm room. Kara's roommate Mei, a socially withdrawn "outcast", observed what seemed like Kara "sleeping off" a hangover. "She looks like an ordinary girl sleeping ordinary sleep" but Kara never wakes up.

Rebecca's eyesight seemed distorted. She shivered. She felt she was being punished for excessive drinking...Rebecca sleeps and sleeps. Rebecca and Kara lived on the same floor in their dorm, a floor now under quarantine. All classes are cancelled, students on other floors evacuated. Two college girls, one dead, one unconscious.

A janitor at the college, with two pre-teen daughters, predicted a coming doomsday. He had outfitted his basement like an underground bunker. His daughter was sent to count the number of gallons of water he had amassed. 50 gallons! Windows now boarded up! No school for the girls. Will the illness pass them by?

More Santa Lora residents succumb to the dream-like state. Specialists are called in. It is determined that although the breathing pattern of many sleepers is shallow or irregular, the accompanying brain waves show that "...these brains are extraordinarily busy". As the number of dreamers increases, selfless heroes arise. Mei tirelessly helps bring dreamers to makeshift facilities to isolate them from those still symptom free. A cordon sanitaire is established. No one may enter or leave Santa Lora. News crews assemble, helicopters buzz overhead. What is this new virus? Will the death toll continue to rise? Will these intense dreams have lasting effects upon those who awaken?

The premise of "The Dreamers" by Karen Thompson Walker is a timely one. The possibility of epidemics or pandemics is very concerning. Unsung heroes arise while shadiness is bound to occur. Despite stellar reviews of "The Dreamers", this reader was unable to invest in the lives of Santa Lora residents. The characters, with the exception of Mei and two orphan girls did not entice me. Perhaps this read was not the right read at the right time.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Dreamers".

The Dreamers is a beautifully imagined, eerily speculative novel about a mysterious sleeping sickness that breaks out in a small, isolated college town in Southern California. The narrative moves through a large cast of characters, as if like a wonderfully fictionalized case study of an epidemic. A freshman girl wakes up in her dorm room, but her popular roommate does not, the first in a string of students to succumb to the sleeping sickness. A father succumbs to the disease, leaving behind two young girls who must fend for themselves in a town that soon declares a state of emergency. A married couple tries to protect their newborn from the outbreak, while across town in the hospital, one of the sleepers sleeps through her pregnancy.
Karen Thompson Walker moves masterfully between these varying perspectives to create an immersive world, speculating on the nature and power of dreams, of consciousness, and our understanding of reality.
This is a novel that deserves the hype it is receiving. If you love dystopic, speculative fiction, you should definitely pick this one up!

I loved this because it ignored the usual trope of people fighting over scraps and hurting each other, but showed how we both isolate ourselves and come together in times of trauma. The differing personalities we meet give a snapshot of time, an enclosed event where only those in it can know it. The author gives outcomes but allows the reader to consider the possibilities – It is melancholy and thought provoking.

In a small college town in California, a girl falls asleep after a night of drinking and can't be wakened. Then another and another and each day it seems, more students are falling asleep. There is an attempt to contain the disease first to the dormitory, then to the campus through quarantine but soon it spreads to the town as doctors, nurses, even entire families fall asleep. And as they sleep, they dream.

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker is a beautifully written tale with, at times, an almost dreamlike quality. It is also a real page-turner. The prose is economical yet it is also evocative. With the use of short paragraphs and sentences, Walker keeps the story moving at an even pace. There are a lot of characters but each is unique enough that it easy to keep their storylines separate. The story deals with some very important issues like loneliness and loss, grief, memory, our innate need to connect with others that too often is coloured by our own hopes and dreams - yet there is often a sense of playfulness in Walker's use of words and phrases. The story does not end on a simple note, there is a kind of sadness in it, but it seemed, at least to me, the right ending. Overall, a beautiful and beautifully compelling novel and I can't recommend it highly enough.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review</i>

It starts with one person, and then another, and then another. People in Santa Lora, California are slipping into a deep sleep and are not waking up. Not dead, but presumed to be dreaming, the sleeping masses are housed in hospitals, libraries … any place large enough to hold all of the people lost to the “Santa Lora Sleep.”
Thought to be contagious, the “Sleep” sparks a quarantine of exposed students at the local college. Soon, the entire town lives in fear of catching the “sickness.” People wear masks, keep their kids home from school, and scrub down before entering their homes in fear of passing the virus on to their family. As the pandemic grows and more and more slip into sleep, the town of Santa Lora is closed off from the rest of the country. No one may enter, no one may escape. What is at the root of the Sleep, and just what is happening behind the closed eyes of those who have caught it?

New York Times best-selling author Karen Thompson Walker returns from her hit 2012 novel, The Age of Miracles, with The Dreamers, a sci-fi story about a mysterious sleeping sickness that overtakes a small California town. The Dreamers reads quite literally like a dream. As if told behind a murky veil, the story follows several of Santa Lora’s inhabitants as they try to avoid The Sleep or, in the case of some, succumb to it. Walker’s writing is effortless as she leisurely peeks into the lives of her characters, slowly giving readers a glimpse into the sickness’s progression and its effect on the town.

Even better than the compelling sleeping sickness plot is Walker’s exploration of how people process upsetting circumstances and react in a crisis. Walker’s characters have dimension and depth, as well as interesting pasts. There’s the story of the college girl turned hero, the two sisters who keep themselves alive after their “prepper” dad falls to the sleep, and the couple next door who try to protect their newborn baby from the sickness at all costs. With rich imagery and evocative details, Walker instantly pulls you into her novel and doesn’t let you go until the very last page.

Speaking of the last page, the ending of this novel is probably its greatest disappointment. After journeying through this sleep pandemic with the characters and becoming invested in the story, Walker does not reveal the origin or purpose of the sickness, nor does she explain the reasons for the variation in dreams of the sleeping. Readers shouldn’t be discouraged from picking up this book, however – it is a great story, well-told – but don’t come into it expecting hard-boiled facts at the end. You won’t find that here. But aren’t dreams like that? Hard to pin down, even harder to explain …

Thank you to NetGalley & Random House for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.