Many thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for giving me an E-Advanced Reader copy in exchange for a fair review. The expected publication date for this novel is January 15, 2019.
The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker explores the idea of dreams, mass hysteria and sudden illness. Santa Lora is a college town located on the edge of a lake. So small that there’s only one way in...and out. College has started as normal but suddenly Mei’s roommate, Rebecca, falls into a deep slumber, one that no one can wake her from no matter how hard they try. This mysterious illness soon takes over the dorm room floor that Mei and Rebecca call home and soon after that it spreads through Santa Lora. No one know what causes this illness or if anyone will ever wake from it.
This novel suffers considerably by Thompson Walker trying to extend the story from a short one to a whole novel. Many of the characters were unnecessary in the plot development, enough so that it took away from giving the other characters, well, more character. Removing some of them, namely, Rebecca, Sara, Libby, Annie, Ben and Grace would have shortened the novel but would have allowed the others to be explored more. I liked Mei, Nathaniel, and Catherine but I didn't find much reason to care about what happened to them. I just found what little there was about them more compelling than the others.
The plot was a fun concept, but it wasn't explored to the extent that it could have been. There was no rush to find a cure or to research it, beyond finding out that they are using more of their brains than ever recorded in a human and are experiencing REM sleep. There’s a few people from a pharmaceutical company who appear briefly, but they were there before everything happened. Catherine is also from out of town but she is a psychologist and not there to study the pathogen itself. I feel like this could have added something to the actual nature of the novel.
Thompson Walker makes it seem like It was just like half the town fell asleep and there wasn't anything in the writing style that made it feel like it was an urgent problem. Yes the author talks about people being quarantined, people trying to get out of town and eventually the usage of medical hazmat suits. These are urgent things but the characters don't reflect on being scared or in a hurry to do anything. When Annie, Ben and Grace try to leave and are turned back at a makeshift border they do so without any fight. They don't panic or try and fight their way out which is common in situations of mass hysteria. It is not just Annie and Ben that act like this, it is a common theme throughout the novel.
I did not like this book at all. Which is unfortunate because it had a lot going for it. It would have been better suited as a short story than a full-length novel unless the concepts and characters were developed more. These things would have made me enjoy it more, but as it stands I did not find it to be enjoyable.

Normally my reviews are obnoxious screeds because I’m a picky reader and incapable of editing myself. And I rarely give out five stars.

This time, however, I cannot think of anything to say. I hesitate to call this book flawless, because no book is, but pressed to find any criticism, I come up short. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll recall a typo.

The Dreamers is gripping. Devastating. Hopeful. It’s beautiful and I’ll probably never be happy again.

The characters are pure works of art. Within paragraphs I connected with each one and never wanted to let them go. They all absolutely broke my heart (though Mei, of course, will forever be my number one). The story was so engaging, I read this on the bus and through lunch and when I came home from work, I didn’t do anything until I finished reading. I read with one hand holding my Kindle, the other hand covering my mouth to stop my heart from escaping. The writing was lovely, the descriptions vivid and bright. The way Walker creates rooms and the people and objects that inhabit those spaces made it feel so tangible, like a dream you mistake for reality.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. –Edgar Allan Poe

A mysterious sleeping sickness strikes a small college town, spreading like wild fire until the town is shut down in an attempt to stop it from spreading.

Like Station Eleven, there are many characters that we follow throughout the telling of the tale, getting to know some better than others. Following the many different story lines makes this a fast read that leaves the reader frantically trying to figure out if the story line they are following is real or part of the dream sickness.
Karen Thompson Walker has a way with words, saying some of the most touching and though provoking things in incredibly short sentences. “I’m sorry. It may as well be I love you.”
This novel touches on the philosophical, medical, and psychological issues associated with the sleeping sickness as well as the ethical question: whose life is worth saving, whose life would you save.

While less dystopian novel and more thought provoking medical sci-fi, it was a good read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Wow, this book was one of the most depressing I have read. I know it was intended to show more--the compassion of humans facing suffering--in this case a mysterious "sickness" that invades a small town as random citizens fall asleep and never awaken--but I had trouble getting past all the death and destruction. Could have been a result of the mood I was in when I read it as I like to think I can set aside my own brain to embrace a story. However, this time I just felt despair and I was so looking forward to this as I loved Walker's Age of Miracles. Yes, it's beautifully written so I do think it's just me; there are many stellar reviews touting this book. So disregard this and you may love it!

In a sleepy little town in California, a virus slowly spreads through the people there. It gives no warning and no alarming symptoms. These people sleep, or, put into a coma. It starts at the local college and squirms it's way into the homes of the town slowly and silently putting it's victims to rest.
No one knows where this virus originates or how it is spread, but they take every known precaution to avoid getting it.
The story starts off moving pretty fast, making you turn the pages to find out what is going on and why. Half-way into the book you discover it's a virus and hope that maybe there is a cure. I was kind of let down at that point. The huge build-up of this to get the revelation in the middle is a big spoiler. I kind of did not want to continue after that.
The ending of this was probably the most lackluster thing of all. Nothing got resolved. I needed a cure for this thing; answers to the questions I had as I read through this. No answers.
So, my hope is that this book is the start of a series. Maybe the author is setting us up for the big reveal in another book. I truly hope so. If that is the case, this is a good start.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House for the opportunity to share my thoughts on this book.

Just a fascinating read. THE DREAMERS follows the lives of a diverse group of people in the aftermath of a mysterious sleeping sickness that strikes a small college town. As hundreds fall asleep and the town is quarantined, we watch two young sisters surviving without their sleeping father, primarily because he always thought the world was on the verge of collapse. We see a psychiatrist brought in to evaluate whether the illness has psychological roots but who becomes separated from her child under the quarantine. We see a new father learn to care for his newborn after his wife falls asleep and we see an isolated Chinese-American college student find herself in the midst of the crisis. Beautifully rendered, THE DREAMERS shows us how to be humanity in the midst of chaos.

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

Quiet often I dream, so vivid and real that I wake up feeling a loss, happiness, scared or ominous . So I can understand the dreaming... I was intrigued by the premise of the story but the characters tended to get lost in all of the rambling about well everything. I found myself skimming entire pages of just endless description and useless information, for example the breakdown of each section of the library and what you might or could possibly read....skim skim... hello, I am well acquainted with the Dewey Decimal System. I felt like the author really just lost the intrigue of a great story with filler and rambling.
Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read The Dreamers for a fair and honest review.

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 knew that I would love this book after reading the synopsis of it. I can't wait to finish it I feel as if the pages just fly by. An illness has swept through the land. Putting people into a perpetual sleep. Dreams are more real than reality. People must struggle in order to survive. Thank you Netgalley.

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.