Holly B / Dressedtoread

BookReview: The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker #5STARS @KThompsonWalker @randomhouse #thedreamers

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My Review:

An epidemic of perpetual sleep strikes a small town.

Many are “trapped” not by a captor, but by their own slumber.

I was captivated immediately from page one. A frightful opening made me ever so curious to read on…

This author’s writing style was mesmerizing and magical. I was absorbed in her words and the fictional town in California. Literary fiction at its best without needless side stories or wasted dialogue. The story flows effortlessly and I adored it.

It begins with some college dorm students falling ill, into a sleepliness, a dizziness, a state of “dreaming.” As the sleep virus spreads so does the frequency of townspeople wearing hospital masks and blue latex gloves.  There is a growing “buzz of panic and gloom“. Some of terrified of the sensation of sleepiness. Nathaniel believes that “hysteria over the illness is the real disease of the era.”

As the cases balloon out of control, no one can stop the unstoppable dreaming state. Some believe it could be a hoax. What is real? What is a dream? 

I adored this story, the magical writing and the tension building suspense. Totally bewitching read. Highly recommend!

I borrowed this one from my local library and it is Available NOW.

 

Book Description:

 

In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. Then a second girl falls asleep, and then another, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. As the number of cases multiplies, classes are canceled, and stores begin to run out of supplies. A quarantine is established. The National Guard is summoned.

Mei, an outsider in the cliquish hierarchy of dorm life, finds herself thrust together with an eccentric, idealistic classmate. Two visiting professors try to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. A father succumbs to the illness, leaving his daughters to fend for themselves. And at the hospital, a new life grows within a college girl, unbeknownst to her—even as she sleeps. A psychiatrist, summoned from Los Angeles, attempts to make sense of the illness as it spreads through the town. Those infected are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, more than has ever been recorded. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?

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