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.

Walker skillfully uses multiple narrators to simulate the chaotic feeling of the mysterious epidemic for the reader, and the brisk pacing kept me up late reading to find out what would happen next. Her clear writing is very appealing and she takes such care with her characters that I will look forward to reading any future books.

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.