This is a very somber novel. None of the characters are likable not even Evelyn. It doesn't even make sense why she and Richard would be together based on their past history.

The format of the book makes it hard to get through as well. It is only one long chapter with occasional changes of point of view which makes it hard to tell what is happening when. Even after reading the whole book, not everything that happened in it is completely clear. All in all, it is confusing and hard to follow.

For starters, I am not sure if the digital version of this was out of sync or something but there were incomplete sections and sentences that just ended without a complete thought. This was extremely frustrating trying to read on my kindle. For the story itself, it was an engaging enough read at first. I was drawn into this mysterious Greek villa vibe and the feuding newlyweds encountering the strange owner and other characters. But the characters overall all felt unrealistic and kind of like caricatures. My major issue is really just how convoluted and nonsensical the mystery at the center of the story becomes. I am writing this review right after finishing and feel like I couldn’t really give a synopsis of how things wrapped up. It was confusing to the point of absurdity which left me feeling very negative towards this book. My other major issue is with a really horrific plot device of something that happened in the past to the female main character that felt just thrown in for a twist and didn’t feel like it was fleshed out enough to warrant such a triggering event thrown in for what seems like shock value only.

💤Book Review💤
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Mini Summary: Still reeling from the chaos of their wedding, Evelyn and Richard arrive on a tiny Greek island for their honeymoon. It’s the end of the season and a storm is imminent. Determined to make the best of it, they check into the sun-soaked doors of the Villa Rosa. Already feeling insecure after seeing the “beautiful people,” the seemingly endless number of young models and musicians lounging along the Mediterranean, Evelyn is wary of the hotel’s owner, Isabella, who seems to only have eyes for Richard.
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Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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My thoughts: happy pub day to this fantastic book! Thank you @simonbooks for the advanced copy !! I posted a mini summary because the regular one gives the entire plot away, so be sure to go in blind to this one! It is such a fun and wacky story, super short even though the chapters are long! It’s told through letters to each spouse, transcripts, and other super unique formats. I’ve never quite read a book like this and this is one you will surely have some thoughts about!
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QOTD- does the length of a chapter bother you ? What’s the perfect size chapter for you in a book? Mine is no more than 20 pages lol!
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#thesleepwalkers #scarlettthomas #simonbooksbuddy #simonbooks #simonandschuster #bookreview #pubday #bookrecommendation #bookstagram #booksofinstagram #booksofig #booksofinsta #bibliophile #bookobsessed #bookworm #booknerd #bookaddict #bookaesthetic #bookish #readersofinstagram #readersgonnaread #readmorebooks #readersofig

A story told in letters, The Sleepwalkers kept me up late trying to figure out what the heck was happening on the Greek Island of Kathos.

Evelyn and Richard are on their honeymoon, it's the end of the tourist season, they're kind of enjoying themselves at the cheap hotel before relocating to the fancy villa Richard's mother gifted them as a wedding present. Things are dark. They're fighting a lot. The fancy place, not so fancy. There's a mystery about the couple who walked into the sea one year prior.

So a page turner and a head scratcher.

Remember this is told in letters? Well, Evelyn's letter to Richard was over 1/3 of the whole book. Written in one sitting. That's over 100 pages! I kept waiting for the break. It never came until

Oh, if you like paragraphs that end like that, you'll like this, because that's how transitions occur in The Sleepwalkers.

The perspective shift when we get to Richard's letter changes the prose style slightly, Richard calls out Evelyn's ability to "extend a metaphor over months", but her skill with the simile is beyond compare:

"It had stopped raining, but the wind still flapped around like an invisible lost bird, fluffing things up, fluttering".

"My tongue felt massive in my mouth, and twisted , like one of the tulip stems".

"So everyone is fluffing each other all the time, like walruses at the circus".

I will stop now, but Evelyn used about eighteen of these on every page (of her 100+ page letter).

The book is described as funny. "My hand hurts from all this writing" made me laugh out loud but I don't think that's the type of funny being advertised.

At one point when they're arguing (in her letter Evelyn recalls every conversation verbatim) I noted "they're so tiresome". They're supposed to be on their honeymoon!

I haven't even talked about the twists and turns and reveals. They are there. I guess the logistics, the interrupted storytelling, the overly flowery prose, the convoluted zigging and zagging, finding them as a couple so hard to fathom - it all got in the way of suspending disbelief and really getting into the mystery, and the ending fell flat.

I thought this would be a neutral review but can't see giving it more than two stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC.

Thank you Simon Books for my #gifted copy of The Sleepwalkers! #SimonBooksBuddy

𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐬
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫: 𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐬
𝐏𝐮𝐛 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞: 𝐀𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐥 𝟗, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒

The Sleepwalkers is a very unique novel with some BIG twists. I always enjoy when novels are told using journal entries, transcripts, and letters, and I definitely think using this format added a lot to the plot.

The author really had me work for this one! I definitely appreciated it and I did not guess any of the twists. There were some characters that I did not care for, and I also did not enjoy the gaslighting aspect. Overall, there were so many secrets and this was an enjoyable book that will definitely keep you guessing and in shock as twists are uncovered!

Posted on Goodreads on April 7, 2024: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/144922955?ref=nav_profile_l
**Posted on Instagram - Full Review- April 8, 2024: http://www.instagram.com/nobookmark_noproblem
**Posted on Amazon on April 9, 2024
**-will post on designated date

Evelyn and ROBERT were married against his family‘s wishes despite that his mother books them A honeymoon on an Italian island Evelyn has a bad feeling and it starts even before the hostess Isabell totally either ignores her or brings her something less than what she ordered and the whole time gives goo goo eyes to her husband ROBERT. She’s riding all this in a letter that will ramp up to eventually be a windfall I really didn’t see this book going where it went and for the most part I totally love that especially when Evelyn would mention something I would be like OMG that’s what that was I love books like that but I think the whole kerfuffle with the movie deal I DK I think it took it off the rails a bit but having said that I still finished it and would still recommend it because it is a good book you can tell the author has a massive amount of talent I would think it’s not easy writing a book that’s mostly letters and I do believe she did a pretty good job. I want to thank Simon and Schuster and Net Galley for my free arc copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

I want to start off by saying that I really love unlikeable characters when they have ANY sort of redeeming quality - I mean, just give me SOMETHING. However, every character in this book was a menace and I hated them all.
This story is told in fragmented letters, often cut short - which was definitely the authors choice and one that made me sigh on multiple occasions. (Not a sigh of relief, mind you, one of pure dissatisfaction.)
Evelyn and Richard are newlyweds on their honeymoon on a little Greek island. They are staying at a hotel and everyone is a little bit… off. Especially the proprietor, Isabella. What seems to be eccentricity quickly devolves into a weird convoluted story of murder (maybe), cheating, sleepwalkers. I really don’t know. I’m seriously still trying to understand and process what I read, but I simply cannot. And for the description of the book to call it, “funny” is a joke in and of itself. This book was dark, weird, and jumbled.
The author truly has a gift for storytelling. The setting of the island jumped off of the page and I felt like I was there bathing in the sun and weathering the storm alongside our cast of characters, but that couldn’t save the story. I wanted to DNF this so many times, but kept reading and reading and reading… and now, I am tired. Thank god I don’t sleepwalk.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher who provided me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All of these thoughts and opinions are my own.

I did not enjoy this book. Personally the writing style and plot just did not work for me. I found the pacing too slow and I tend to enjoy more fast paced suspense/thrillers.

While I praise the writer for her ingenuity in writing this book, I also decry the writing style. This book did not have the flow that I like in a book, which in turn made me have to think a lot. I read for pleasure, which for me, translates to an easy ability to drop into the life of a story. This book did not allow me to do that. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC. This review is my own. Two stars because I was impressed by the writer's creativity.

This was not for me. It was very confusing for a majority of the book. The main characters were unlikable. The reveal at the end was satisfying but seemed out of left field.

This was a “what did I just read” kind of book. For the first nearly half of the book, the main character is writing a letter to her husband, recalling their honeymoon up to that point. Then it switches to the husband writing a letter to his wife. Then some other letters and a transcript. It has no chapters, and with that long letter at the beginning, kind of felt like a never-ending run-on sentence. But I will say that if you stick around for that, the husband’s letter makes things get interesting. And then the ending… well I won’t say more here to keep it spoiler-free, but I’m not sure how I feel about it. Part of me likes it, part of me is disappointed. This is a book I wouldn’t necessarily recommend, but want people to read so we can discuss it.

Have you ever finished a book and thought “what in the H*LL just happened!?” Well, that was my exact sentiment with this one. Was it a ghost story, a time loop, a mystery play that isn’t really even happening? I honestly still don’t know…

This has to be one of the most uniquely written, sinister and seductive stories I have ever read - Gothic drama mixed with titillating thrills and an edgy surrealism that’s rare to see. There was so much I didn’t see coming. The twists and turns were so disorienting that I was never headed in the right direction at all. That’s something I LOVE in any thriller.

The story is centered around one couples disastrous honeymoon on a Greek island, told through letters, notes, photographs, and barely legible transcripts. Pages are damaged with missing pieces that the author leaves like breadcrumbs for us to piece together as we go.

This one is something you must read to understand and even then you’ll still be left thinking about what else we don’t know. In this case, that’s a great thing. Very well done. 👏🏻

Richard and Evelyn are on their honeymoon, not where they planned on going, but where Richard’s mother has sent them. Unfortunately this is not the only surprise for the newly married couple. As they meet an eclectic group of people at the villa while waiting on a potentially dangerous storm they end up learning new things about each other as well as themselves. Fast paced, fascinating story that is difficult to put down.

This book was so unusual, i have never read a book like this one, where we get one POV, and I dislike the character, and then we get another POV, and I dislike that character as well, and even more as we stay in their POV’s. Richard and Evelyn are on their honeymoon in Greece, and already I was waiting for something to happen because clearly this isn’t an average couple, something is off. And I think I missed the whole mystery of the sleepwalkers lol.

Thank you Simon Books and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas is a dark domestic thriller. Evelyn and Richard are on their honeymoon, but their time spent with each other is anything but happy.

This book sort of tested my patience. The writing is unique for sure, but it is not for everyone. Written in a style of "I said, you said," the story unravels. It's very dark and touches upon very difficult subjects.

Thank you, Simon and Schuster, for this book.

I personally felt like this story dragged overall. The premise was very interesting and it definitely delivered in making me feel unsettled, but unfortunately I just found myself kind of bored most of the time.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Scarlet Thomas’s The Sleepwalkers is cleverly written. Told through artifacts such as letters, a few (unseen) photographs, and a voice recording, we are left to put the story together ourselves.

The book opens on newlyweds Richard and Evie, who are honeymooning on a bleak Greek island during the off-season. They clearly can’t stand each other, and the reasons for this slowly develop in a series of letters which were written for the other. While interesting, this style can often be frustrating as some letters end mid-thought, and the reader is left with a number of unanswered questions.

They are staying at the Villa Rosa, which you are led to believe is a resort, but which is, in actuality, a creepy old property run by Isabella (who clearly has a thing for Richard), where locking doors is forbidden, and there are no curtains on the honeymoon suite. It is also best known as the site of The Sleepwalkers — a married couple who drowned after a wife followed her sleepwalking husband into the sea. Was this a story of tragic love or of something far more nefarious? You’ll have to read the book to see, although it too does not have an ending.

While sometimes a slog to get through, I recommend this book for its style alone although it is not for everyone. 3.5 stars (rounded up) out of 5 stars.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a complimentary advanced reader’s copy of this book.

I was interested in this book because of the comparison to White Lotus. While there are some similarities, like broody rich couples on vacations in a creepy hotels, it did not thrill me as much as the show. The Sleepwalkers is told in long form letters that are unfinished due to damage to the paper they are written on. The plot was very disjointed. I think it was written this way on purpose, but I had a really hard time following the story because it was difficult to identify who was speaking. I am not entirely sure I understood the ending, I do think there is an audience for this book! It is incredibly unique and lovers of cerebral literary fiction on the weirder side will enjoy this one.

Thank you Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC!

The Sleepwalkers is a captivating novel that delves into the themes of secrets, family curses, and the past resurfacing in the present. This fabulously sly and slippery tale follows a honeymoon that spirals from bad to worse and then even worse yet. Thomas' writing is vivid, scalpel-sharp, and impossible to put down.

What a unique read! This was told through letters in an epistolary style. Since the letters were recovered, there are gaps and parts where the letters just end - I assume this was purposeful and not just a fault with the e-galley which others have speculated. There are a few references to other works (like the myth of Persephone) that worked well throughout. This leans towards literary fiction more so than a thriller but there are thriller elements.