What if the whole world fell asleep...and didn’t wake up again?
Dave Torres, a night watchman in a placid coastal town, knows all about sleep troubles. Since childhood, he’s battled terrors and nightmares. Sometimes those battles leak into his waking life, with disastrous consequences for those he loves. Now Dave lives alone and self-medicates to neutralize his dreams. It’s not much of a life, he knows.
The morning after Independence Day, Santa Mira, California, is so quiet Dave can hear the ocean from miles away. Traffic signals blink from red to green over empty intersections. Storefronts remain locked up tight. Every radio station whispers static.
And all over town, there are bodies, lying right where their owners left them. Dead right where they slept.
Dave―along with his ex-girlfriend, Katie, his best friend, Matteo, and Linda, a nurse he’s just met―struggle to unravel the mystery before sleep overtakes them all.
Except the answer to the mystery might lie in the one place that frightens Dave His twisted, unnerving dreams. Now Dave and his friends must straddle the liminal boundary between life and death as they fight to save everyone they’ve ever loved―and to keep their eyes open.
Because if any of them falls asleep now, it will be the last thing they ever do.
It's a mixed review!
First off; I haven't heard the podcast at all, so I can't say how closely this book hews to that; it could be word perfect the same or just have the same general premise, I don't know. This review is just based on the book.
It's a fantastic premise! Everyone who falls asleep dies as soon as they start to dream. What a creepy idea. I found myself yawning and tired just reading it!
However, the execution wasn't great, for me. We'd get a chapter with one or another of our main characters, then a couple of vignettes of some random other people falling asleep - apart from twice, they never had any connection to the main characters, or if they did I missed it. It was just 'here's a person falling asleep, now they're dead.' Most of them didn't even know that anything was going on, they just went about their routine and then fell asleep.
Plus, the fact that just about the whole world went down in 24 hours? Ok, it happened between 4 and 5am in the US; most people would be asleep then. But that's 10am in the UK, 12pm in Moscow, 6pm in Bejing. We know there were survivors in the US tweeting and blogging about what was happening. No one in those other countries picked up on those messages and stayed awake? Everyone in Mission Control died before they could warn the ISS?
(I also didn't like the supernatural 'explanation' we were given, but that's just me.)
I liked the writing style, though, it's quick, concise and easy to follow. The characters were interesting as well and I enjoyed following along with them. On that level, I'd definitely recommend this.
But I have to ask - that ending?! Is there meant to be another book coming, or is it really just being left there?
The Edge of Sleep publishes on the 20th June, 2023. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
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