Great idea but so frustrating!
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The blurb
At first, they blame the air.
It’s an old idea, a poison in the ether, a danger carried in by the wind. A strange haze is seen drifting through town on that first night, the night the trouble begins. It arrives like weather, or like smoke, some say later, but no one can locate any fire. Some blame the drought which, for years, has been bleeding away the lake and browning the air with dust. Whatever this is, it comes over the town quietly: a sudden drowsiness, a closing of the eyes. Most of the victims are found in their beds.
One night, in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her bedroom, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up.
She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry the girl away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital.
Then a second girl falls asleep, and a third, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town.
The Review
This is exactly my type of book ... mysterious, dystopian and unsettling. It only really failed on one major front for me and that was that it didn't ever really explain what had happened. And not in a, "Oh well that's interesting, it's left it open to interpretation and lots of possibilities", but in an "OH FOR GOD'S SAKE, I INVESTED A LOT OF TIME IN THIS BOOK AND YOU'RE NOT GOING TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED?!" So, yes, I finished it feeling a mite frustrated.
That's a shame, because on the whole its a really well written and unnerving book. It's a great premise (although I doubt it's one that hasn't been done before) - people start to fall asleep....and just don't wake up. What I really liked about this is how the tension slowly crept in, more and more people started falling asleep and the paranoia, unease and panic amongst the community is palpable. It was also really fascinating to consider how the rest of the world reacts when something so horrific happens to one community and the lengths that they will go to, in order to contain a contagious virus.
The author really took the idea and ran with it too. She makes you consider things that you might not have imagined with a virus like this. Like, what happens to the sleepwalkers? What about those that fall asleep at home and aren't discovered? How do you care for someone that can't wake up - and then how do you care for thousands of people that can't wake up? How would you protect your children from this outbreak?
We live this story through several characters, some of which you really begin to invest in. Only to have the rug pulled out from under your feet as - and this is no great spoiler - not all of them make it. That I have no big issue with, killing off characters is a great way to enrage a reader into loving your story even more, however in this story characters are dismissed without so much as a by your leave. Here one minute and gone the next, without acknowledging the huge part they have played in the story up till then or allowing the reader a moment to grieve. Having said that, I loved the dreamy 3rd person prose used to narrate the story, which did leave you feeling slightly apart from the action - like a distant and impassioned onlooker.
I really wanted to love this and for 3/4 of the book I did. But there were just too many questions left unanswered for me to get a real sense of satisfaction. However its incredibly well written, thought provoking and with some fantastic character studies. If you don't like your stories as neatly finished as me, you're bound to love it more.
The Dreamers was released on 7th Feb 2019 by Simon and Schuster UK Fiction.
Big thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.