Look. Don't read this book if you're one of those people who crap their pants and jump five feet in the sky when your best friend hides behind the door and whispers Boo. There are worse things out there. Like The Sleepwalkers.
So, God help you if you actually get heart attacks from jump scares. I advise you to close this tab and crawl under your blankets and pray for your life. Because shhh, do you hear that? They're coming.
The Sleepwalkers does not have the best writing you've seen in your life. It won't make you drool wishing you were ever that good but what it does have is a good plot and bomb-ass characters. Which is enough. The story will have you gripping the edge of your seat, your mind will be a mess trying to figure out what in the feckin' hell is going on and you'll enjoy the feeling. And if you don't, you have the permission to shoot my kneecaps.
If there's anything I hate, it's horror books that end like fairy tails. No, that doesn't mean I want the characters lying in a pool of blood with their neck sliced. I like pink, confetti-filled happy endings but no need to drag the cheese in. J. Gabriel Gates wrote the most perfect ending for a horror book. It was amazing and I keep rereading last line to see if I hadn't dreamed the whole thing up.
Then why didn't I give it five stars? Trust me, I'm tempted. In the near future, when I can't stop thinking about Caleb and Bean I will change my rating to five stars. Right now, I have all the this-part-was-written-in-a-rush and you-forgot-to-mention-that-again fresh in my mind.
Praise God. 0757315887 Finally, a young adult horror novel that is just the right level of, well, horrifying. Caleb, formerly known as Billy, receives a mysterious letter from a childhood friend and takes off from his home in California to the small Florida town where he grew up. He's accompanied by Bean, his best friend and comic relief, but the mystery deepens when Caleb discovers that his father has disappeared along with hundreds of others. (Which is odd, since the population of the town is 123--where did the hundreds of missing folks come from? But I digress.) I literally had to walk away from the book at points because I got too nervous for the characters (reminding myself they weren't, in fact, real people) or reread parts because I blasted through them in my hurry to see what happened next. The characters are well-developed, the plot twists are surprising, and the writing is rich and engaging. I can't wait to recommend this book to the teens who complain that there are no scary books. And then I'll dare them to sleep with the lights off. 0757315887 Ok. Breathe. I need to breathe. This... man, this was screwed up. Started out with heavy psychological horror, went from that to book version of a B slasher flick and then proceeded to become a crazy satanist cult God-can't-help-you-now sort of thing.
It was crazy and at times terrifying and even though I was shocked and had my heart practically beating out of my chest, I loved it.
J. Gabriel Gates should definitely write more, his visual style and his knack for psychological horror make for a great combination when it comes to writing horror books, and honestly, I'd put him right up there with the likes of Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Debatable in terms of experience, of course, but hey, if he's this good now, imagine what chillingly terrifying books can come out of this guy's mind in the future?
Some of the ideas were a little too out-there but honestly I haven't read one horror book that didn't have at least one or more ridiculous and/or senseless plot points, so this was obviously no exception. It's not that some of the things in this book were screaming over the top! like some other books do - I'm glaring at you now, The Vanishing Game - but it's like there were so many things the author tried to include that some of them ended up not going far. Not that it mattered, really. If ever horror book was as much of a blast as it was paging through this, I'd have read them all by now.
And now to the only reason I'm not giving it a full five stars - because you must be wondering how is it I praised the hell out of this book and only gave it four stars, but there's a perfectly good explanation for it: Bean. I loved Bean. He wasn't the main character and I guess he was written with the purpose of being very likable, but likable just doesn't cut it. Bean is perfect. Honestly. If Bean was a real person, I'd stalk his facebook, loiter around his house and take pictures of his naked self through the blinded windows and then find a way of getting myself married to him so we could ride off gloriously into the sunset, him saying something snarky as he slipped an arm around my shoulders and me grinning at him and, for some reason, wearing a big ass sombrero.
J. Gabriel Gates gets my eternal thanks for creating such a character, but as a vendetta for what Gates did next, I shall take away one meaningless star off his review because screw him, he's not the only douchebag around here... 0757315887 Where to start with this one? How about with the fact that I'm torn.
How I felt about this book: 2 stars.
What the writing deserves: 4 stars.
I was expecting great many things from this book. I was expecting to be sucked in and be lost for few hours, maybe couple of days. I was expecting to be entertained with riveting action filled story and characters I could cheer to get through the horrifying events.
I was underwhelmed.
One thing I can't blame is the writing. It was short and to the point, and descriptive at the same time. The grammar was stellar and I love, love, loved the fact that majority of this book was written in third limited. He and she, as opposed to I, makes me swoon every time.
The events were marched by in such a way that I could see them playing out vividly behind my eyelids - when I was paying enough attention - in a film like fashion. And therein lies my problem with this book.
Was this a script that was rejected and then reworked into a book?
I can't tell for sure, but that's how I read it. As something that belongs on the silver screen instead on the pages of a book. I've had this problem before with certain stories:
What would make a great finish for a film or a series won't have the same emotional effect on a reader of a book. With The Sleepwalkers, though, it wasn't just the ending.
Gates gave me plenty of reasons to like Caleb, Bean, and Christine, it just wasn't enough to reach me. There was something missing, and I suspect that something was the portrayal of a gifted actor.
You'll notice I haven't said much about the plot, there's a reason for that. Although, this wasn't my cup of tea, it very well may be yours and I don't want to spoil you the joy of finding out for yourself.
I received an Advanced Readers Copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. 0757315887 The book as a whole reads as scattered and nominally disjointed as that blurb read, to me at least. I always get a little excited at the prospect of what sounds like a good horror novel. On first look, without reading the novel, I wouldn't think that blurb too bad. But in hindsight, everything runs into everything else, just like it does in the novel, and it doesn't make for too great of a read.
I won't say I had high hopes for it. I just get excited to read horror. But I'm well aware of the pitfalls of the genre, and how massive turds could be laid in the dark corners of it. While THE SLEEPWALKERS isn't a massive turd, it's pretty much a turd nonetheless.
It was slow-going to start, taking it's sweet time getting into the meat of the plot. I didn't really mind like I normally would. So I waited. Some needless characters were introduced that didn't serve a purpose beyond the first couple of chapters. But when Bean and Caleb went on the road, that's really when the story started and things started getting weird.
Bean I really could have lived without. I just found him horrendously grating in his incessant need to be obnoxious. I just felt the character was pushing for something that didn't feel natural at all. He just always grated on me. Caleb ended up being your classic horror hero, or anti-hero, as it were. I didn't really feel one way or another for him, which isn't really a good thing. He kept getting these unexplainable needs to stay when all signs pointed to get the hell out of there and that bugged me. Classic in horror, but it wasn't played very well here and he ended up with a lot of blood on his hands. Which he dwelled upon for about half a chapter and then it wasn't really mentioned again. So that didn't sit well with me either.
I was fading from the plot and then quickly hooked back in once the sleepwalkers were introduced. I thought those things were pretty creepy and the idea of people so controlled, and possessed, like that while asleep is pretty terrifying. But it all jumped the shark once clown make-up and end-of-days prophecies starting showing their ugly faces. Once a horror novel (or movie) turns towards the downright silly, you can't really recover from that. And I don't mean making light of the moment, silly, but scoffing at the pages silly. Once I hit that point the book was lost to me. It could have had redeeming moments but it really didn't. It ended how I figured it would end, the telltale showdown came to fruition and I turned off my eReader and moved on to the next book.
Ultimately I felt like THE SLEEPWALKERS was trying too hard to be horror. Instead of letting the creepiness of the asylum be it's down character and pull the reader in (despite how cliche that is, it can still work when done right), the door exploded in an orgy of horror tropes, as if the author were trying to cram as many of them into the pages as possible. Like Scary Movie but without the humor. I felt inundated by horrorness instead of horrified by it. I wanted to be afraid but wasn't. I wanted to be creeped out and for a couple of instances I was but they were few and far between. I didn't feel like the characters were real. They recovered from their ordeal far too easily for my liking and while it didn't really end on an up-note, it just felt too neatly tied into a pretty bow for me. I wasn't scared at the end of the book. I was just done with it.
THE SLEEPWALKERS was a decent try at horror but I'd have to say less is more. Letting the sleepwalkers be sleepwalkers would have been more than enough. But throwing in the Joker and overcooked prophecies just doesn't leave enough room for anything else. 0757315887
READ & DOWNLOAD The Sleepwalkers
A chilling and masterfully crafted teen horror novel guaranteed to keep the pages turning, the mind reeling, and the lamp on any reader's bedside table on long after midnight.
Privileged and popular Caleb Mason is celebrating his high school graduation when he receives a mysterious, disturbing letter from his long-lost childhood playmate, Christine. Caleb and his jokester friend Bean decide to travel to his tiny hometown of Hudsonville, Florida, to find her. Upon arrival, they discover the town has taken a horrifying turn for the worse. Caleb's childhood home is abandoned and his father has disappeared. Children are going missing. The old insane asylum has reopened, and Christine is locked inside. Her mother, a witch, is consumed with madness, and Christine's long-dead twin sister whispers clues to Caleb through the static of an a.m. radio. The terrifying prophesies of the spirits are coming to pass. Sixteen clocks are ticking; sixty-six murdered souls will bring about the end of the world. As Caleb peels back layer after layer of mystery, he uncovers a truth more horrible than anything he had imagined, a truth that could only be uttered by the lips of the dead.
The Sleepwalkers is like a supernova of awesomeness blasting through your brain. Expect total mental annihilation. 0757315887 Warning: This book will give you nightmares! This book is full of suspense at every corner and will have you on the edge of your seat!
My Rating: 5 of 5 This book is really great!
My Cover Thoughts: The cover is what drew me to read the book. It is a picture of a girl in a white dress standing in a door way. When you look at it you wonder if it is a ghost or something else more sinister.
My Thoughts/Review: WOW this book had me on the edge of my bed the entire time I was reading it. It was full of suspense and at times something out of a horror movie!
Caleb has just graduated from high school with his best friend Bean and they are celebrating at Caleb’s house. Bean is harassing Caleb because he is going to Africa to write about the AIDS epidemic instead of staying home for the summer and surfing and hanging out. Caleb and Bean have been best friends for years and Bean does not want Caleb to go to Africa because he wants to hang out before they go off to college.
At the party everyone is having fun and they want Caleb to give a speech but he says no way let’s eat cake. While he is getting a second piece of cake he wanders over to the table where the gifts are. He sees a lot of envelops and gifts and while he is trying to balance his second piece of cake he drops it right on the envelope. He is trying to clean it off so his mother won’t get mad and that is when he sees then envelope does not have a return address but it is addressed to him by his full name. He is curious so he cleans it off and opens it up. Once he opens the letter all his nightmares that he has had as a child come flashing back to him. He shows the letter to Bean and asks for his opinion. It is decided he will not be going to Africa but to his childhood home to see his best friend from childhood.
Once they get there they find that the town that Caleb grew up in is no longer how it was. There are children missing and people missing and no one in the town seems to care. That is when Caleb and Bean go to see his best friend Christine and find out that kids go missing all the time and that they are locked up in this place and no one helps them get out. Caleb swears to Christine he is going to get her out of that place and help her because he owes her that. The only thing that Caleb does not realize is that he is in for a serious journey when he tries to free Christine. Will they make out of alive or will they die trying?
This story has lots of twists and turns and will have you at the edge of your seat wondering what is going to happen next. J. Gabriel Gates is the next Stephen King with this book!
Advice: CREEPTASTIC READ! You will not be disappointed once you start reading this book you will not be able to put it down.
0757315887 2.5 stars
Wow. This guy has serious talent! - That was one of my first thoughts when I started reading The Sleepwalkers. The opening scene scared the living daylights out of me. It sent chills down my spine, just as the author intended. The prose stunned me with its beauty, too. I must have marked at least ten different sentences in the first chapter alone. Understandably, it all raised my expectations, which, sadly, weren’t met later on.
I'll start with the good parts, and then get to the thing that really bothered me:
I couldn’t predict where the story was going at all, and since I’m usually able to see everything coming from a mile away, that was a huge plus in my book. Even though Caleb wasn’t instantly likeable, I warmed up to him soon enough. As his estrangement from his father started coming to light, it gave me a better understanding of him, making me willing to forgive him for some of his actions, especially the ones I particularly disliked. Bean, on the other hand, I loved right away. He’s the character that brings humor into the story, so that part isn’t surprising at all. I could have done without his whining later on, but overall, I felt that he was a well-built, complete character.
I admit that I normally tend to shy away from horror stories and that I’m rarely in the right mood for one, but I WAS in such a mood when I picked this book up, and still, The Sleepwalkers failed to impress me. It wasn’t because of the prose, which was strong and evocative, although uneven at times. It wasn’t because of the characters, the plot, or even the occasionally clumsy dialogues.
So what went wrong? Just one very important thing: pacing, pacing, pacing!
As much as I appreciated the well-developed characters, in many ways, reading Sleepwalkers was a slow (and I do mean slow) torture at times. The pacing remained unchanged throughout the first half, it rarely sped up or slowed down. If you want your scary parts to really BE scary, you have to give your readers some downtime, insert a few lighter moments that will make them relax, and then surprise them with something intense. In the first 40% of the book, the pacing was completely monotone, and quite frankly, it bored me to tears. Things did get a little better later on, but it took me a while to readjust and I’m afraid my overall enjoyment was diminished.
Perhaps I should have waited a while to pick this up after reading The Repossession. Both books are about missing kids no one is really bothering to look for, but to me, The Repossession was infinitely better and far more convincing. Nevertheless, I will go back to my first sentence: J. Gabriel Gates is a man of enormous talent. Even though this didn’t work for me, I feel that he showed tremendous potential and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
For this review and more, please visit The Nocturnal Library
0757315887 “This is no vacation. A cruise is a vacation. Cancun is a vacation. This is some goddamned Hardy Boys shit.”
Initial Final Page Thoughts.
I feel like I'm a sleepwalker right now.
High Point.
BEAN… seriously, I love this guy, every word that came out of his mouth made me chuckle to myself and want to marry him. And.. um, Caleb.. yeah he was OK too, I guess. Small towns where nothing happens, well except all the HORROR. And no one can hear you scream. Genuinely creepy, definitely not one for bed times. Spectacular writing. I know some people, for whatever reason, are morally opposed to present tense but I’ll tell you, itreally works in this book. Mr Gates has a tremendously visual writing style and it’s so affective….and HORRIFYING. White noise. Sleepwalkers. Nightgowns. Dream centres. Underground sewers. Witches. Mention of cake (always a high point). Best friends. Satanic rituals. Psychopaths. And that end sentence… *shudder*.
Low Point.
There is a lot going on in this book. When I read books, I often find myself coming up with questions that I’d like to ask the author… whether it’s just out of curiosity or whether it would clear something in the plot up for me.
When I ended up with about 20 questions about the ending alone, I knew something must be a bit off.
Even I can’t be that dim. Debatable, I know. But come on.
The whole idea of the book was so original and exciting but it often seemed that Gates had so many good ideas running through his head that he felt compelled to include every single one of them into the story, sacrificing coherence in some places.
But saying that, I’d rather a book be confusing than dull. And this book was definitely not dull.
This book also terrified the living crap out of me…. So yeah, there’s that too.
And… um. EVIL CLOWNS. Yeah thanks for that, mate
*twitch*
Love Interest.
Oh Christine, sweet, beautiful and potentially psychopathic Christine. I don’t really want to say anything about her because it’s best to leave things unsaid…. But I’ll say one thing.
Managing to be irresistible to a boy while wearing a nightgown and crazy eyes? Brava, Christine, brava.
Best Friend.
Bean. Be still my beating heart.
In Mr Gates’ own words…
“The kind of guy you end up drinking with, laughing with, running naked laps around the block with, stealing people’s garden gnomes with until seven in the morning- when you had no intention of drinking in the first place. Bean is that guy.”
Read: Bean is my guy.
You will probably notice that I have missed out one of the major subjects here… but
Theme Tune.
Enter Sandman-Metallica.
“Sleep with one eye open.”
Or… y’know….NEVER SLEEP AGAIN.
Angst Level.
8/10. Man, this book put me through the ringer. I’m not sure whether it was because I had no idea what was going on for large sections so I was constantly on edge waiting for sweet, sweet clarity but… yeah.
My neighbour deciding that this weekend would be a good time to use effin’ POWER TOOLS sporadically did not help this matter either.
My nerves are in shatters.
There were a few long pages full of Caleb feeling sorry for himself and generally doing the jitterbug...But considering what kind of mental things are happening around him…. I think I can let this one slide.
Recommended For.
People who like psychological thrillers. People who like original ideas. People who don’t mind being completely confused by a story. People who once woke up in the middle of their school field with a bottle of Jagermeister next to them and wondered what the eff just happened. People who think they could work it in a floor-length nightgown. People who would eat cake off an envelope if they dropped it on, too. People who would just close the door if they saw a racoon in their bath and go and make a sandwich. People who wouldn’t think twice about approaching a crazy naked lady performing satanic rituals in her garden. People who think that grinding their teeth at night is strange… just you wait,
I received a copy of this book from the publishers.
You can read this review and lots of other exciting things on my blog here 0757315887 This is one of those books that you must read with ALL the lights on, your back to the wall, and someone else in the room with you. Once I started this book, I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure nothing was coming after me! This book reminded me of the movie House on Haunted Hill, but in a teen version.
I don't why I continue to read scary books even though I know they scare me. But holy cow! This book is written amazingly and just creeped me out to the bone. I mean, it really shook my up. Mr. Gates did an amazing job in scaring the begezzus out of me. And I am sure he will do just a fine job doing that to everyone else. His story line is filled with non-stop mystery, action, and plenty of raising the hair on the back of my neck moments. The plot line slowly creeps out on you as you read. Nothing is what is seems, but before you know it, Mr. Gates writing jumps out on you so fast! I loved that the reader is kept at bay from secrets, but also get secrets reveals little by little. There are some crazy parts in this book. Heck, it made me think I was crazy!
The characters of this book are very well developed. I loved that they are smart, witty, and very fast to catch on to everything quickly. The main character Caleb is a fighter. As the reader travels with him, Caleb develops more. We seen him fight, uncover mysteries, and save a friend. Caleb is an easy going guy that everyone will love and fight for.
If you love a good scary book, one that will have you looking over your shoulder read this book! Not only will if have you biting your fingernails off, you will be at the edge of your seat! Mr. Gates writing is easy to read and easy to get into. He captures the readers with one word, and does not let you go.
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