Review Detail

3.3 3

Sleepless

Young Adult Fiction 306

Lock Your Bedroom Door And Bar The Windows

November 17, 2009

Overall rating

5.0

Plot

N/A

Characters

N/A

Writing Style

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Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

N/A

Reader reviewed by Joe M.

Thomas Fahy's "Sleepless" is a page-turner about a Â group of teenagers who, since coming back from a volunteering project in New Orleans, have been having gruesome, unnerving nightmares. What's worse is that when they wake up, they are not where they were when they fell asleep. Or at least, not the same way they fell asleep. Soon, another student from Saint Opportuna Catholic High School is found dead. It becomes too clear that they are killing in their sleep. But who is making them - and will they be able to stop it before anyone else is murdered?

This story has two narrators - Emma and Jake, who both have feelings for the other, wondering if they love them back. A typical scenario that is anything but typical - Jake is a drug addict who sells pot at the auto repair shop he works at, and Emma misses her deceased mother, and wants to find someone who could have the same love for her. Their friends are Duncan - a boy who has a bizarre interest in geology, and Lily, who ... well, I never really saw anything personal about her.

In New Orleans, these teenagers went with their teacher Dr. Beecher, to New Orleans where they helped Habitat for Humanity build a house for a single mother and her daughter. After the murder of the local priest there, everyone swears not to tell a soul about what they witnessed.

Now the students at Saint Opportuna have nightmares and sleepwalk, not knowing what they are looking for in their sleep. Things go from strange to scary when a classmate, Susann Roberts, smashes a boy's nose with her textbook, only to be found unresponsive and not knowing what just took place.

I found this an incredible novel full of all the suspense and mystery I could ever want! The particularly gruesome deaths especially captured my attention. (However, I must say that the whole "blood" theme is overplayed a bit.) The characters were okay, however, I thought Duncan and Lily were a little one-dimensional - particularly for being main characters. Lily in particular seems like a paper doll only stuffed into "Sleepless" in order to serve as Duncan's crush/friend. Even Emma seems to be lacking in personality-she misses her mom and has so far been really bad about picking boyfriends-whoo.

Â The twist ending is excellently action-packed, jaw-dropping, and full of violence (what else could be in a horror book?) !!

The only thing confusing to me is the recommended age range. The jacket says "Ages 12 +", but that seems to be way too low for this sort of "Night of the Dreaming Dead"- sort of like giving the "Birds" movie a G rating. "Sleepless" is full of language, violence, drugs, disturbing situations, and sex - everything that a 12-year-old should not be reading!

But for teenagers, on the other hand ... Reader Discretion Advised.

Guest #1 Reviewer

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