Sleepless - Louise Mumford

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review thanks to Harper Collins and Netgalley.

Thea is an insomniac; she hasn’t slept more than three hours a night for years. So when an ad for a sleep trial that promises to change her life pops up on her phone, Thea knows this is her last chance at finding any kind of normal life.

Thea MacKenzie falls asleep just before her alarm rings every night, signing up to take part in a sleep trial, is just what Thea thinks will solve her sleep problems. Arriving on the island, Thea quickly realises that the trial might not be what it seems.

From the start of the book, I thought I would enjoy this story as the premise sounded quite interesting. Once Thea reached the island however I started to struggle with the story. Personally I found myself getting confused as to who the characters were. There are many twists and surprises in the story, but unfortunately this book was just not for me.

Rating: 3.5/5

This is a really interesting idea - an insomniac, Thea, heads to a specialist experimental sleep clinic on an island in the hope that they will help her to sleep again.

However, the experiement is not as it seems and the reader is pushed along on a well paced thriller as Thea tries to work out what is going on and how she will survive.

Loses a star simply becuase there is a concept of a face in a window which the writer clearly needs to draw upon.... and so on numerous occassions clunkily throws it into text until finally the plot pulls together.

Thanks for NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review :-)

This wasn’t what I was expecting at all!

Going into this I assumed Thea would take part in a sleep trial, come home after being ‘cured’ and then she would experience strange things happening…..that’s not how it went at all.

This is definitely more of a dystopian psychological thriller which was a little gruesome at times. The book is set during the entire sleep trial where you a thrown into this crazy whirlwind experiment of sorts. There are hints of ghosts and then pretty early on in the book you find out what is happening and from then on it’s this creepy cat and mouse chase.

There were a few niggles, such as the chapters with Thea’s mum. I didn’t quite understand why they were included as I didn’t feel they added to the story in any way.

Once you discover what is going on it is fast paced and whilst it wasn’t what I was expecting it was still an enjoyable and quick read. The ending was great though and gave me chills!

Well this was a roller coaster of a ride. It started of slow but then got going. I really enjoyed it, this year I have suffered insomnia, not to Theo's extent which is what attracted me to the audio book. I cannot work what genre this is dystopian, gothic, thriller captures it all.

Loved the mum - she reminded me of older friends.

The narrator was amazing and the voice changes for different people was very well done.

I would thoroughly recommend this audio book. I was provided an advance copy by Netgalley, HQ and Louise Mumford for a fair and honest review which I have done.

Must listen if this is your genre

The story was good, but dragged on at times, and I flatted out skipped her dreams. I was ready to be done at that point. The ending was okay, but would have been more satisfactory knowing what happened to Thea, and if she ever got any sleep.

When I caught sight of Sleepless, I knew this book was for me. Sleep is my frenemy. On Facebook, our relationship status would be “It’s complicated”. I immediately thought the book had been written for me: sleep at its heart, categorized as a thriller, and an intriguing blurb. This was a no-brainer.

Did Sleepless deliver?

It did more than that!

The striking opening felt both like a slow-motion movie and a powerful and quick bounce on a wall. Thea has never been able to sleep properly. She’s lucky if she gets an hour of sleep per night. Or day. We’ve all experienced the lack of sleep, the state of feeling under water, as if every little task was too much. The bright light, the loud sounds, the headache. Thea lives with all of this every day. She’s found a way to cope, or at least, she thought she had, until an accident forces her to look for help on uncharted territories.

Sleep, and more generally how our brain works, is fascinating and Louise Mumford totally nailed both the account of what a lack of sleep can do to us and how to explain it in normal people’s way as well as in a more scientific way. No, there are no intricate talks with medical blabla in Sleepless. Instead, the author took a big lense and focused it on a bunch of people who couldn’t close their eyes for different reasons. Then she gave them a solution. And the rest is… Sleepless!

Thea decides to trust an app and become part of a trial that pledges to ‘mend’ those bad sleeping patterns. She ends up away from her mother, robbed of everything she knows and thrown on an island with strangers suffering from the same kind of issues. Would you make the same choice? Well, after reading this book, my answer is no. I’m gonna befriend insomnia and welcome it when it visits!!! Louise Mumford anchored all of her characters in reality, kept their eyes open, and drew their nightmares in. Isn’t this scary??

Well, there are more than one kind of nightmares in this book. With a bunch of scientists gathering data about you, then trying their magic on you, you can ask yourself who ever thought about doing this. An insomniac? A genius? Yes, there is work to be done to help people, and there is so much we don’t know about the brain, but that’s where it hurts. We don’t know, and we won’t, if we don’t poke and try and get answers. But for that you need guinea pigs. And we all know how science develops. Lots of wrong answers before you get the right one.

Sleepless is like sleep, it is made of different phases: Thea, our main character and the driving force behind the book, the scientific research, the mystery surrounding the company and the app, and sleep itself.

I read this book jumping from one scene to the other, just like in a dream; with only a gold string keeping everything attached. ‘Thea can’t sleep’ became ‘Thea embarks on a crazy thing’, then I got to meet new characters, like Rosie, and each of them added colors to the black and white journey of the sleep-deprived. Questions popped up. The genius in this book is that those questions don’t all revolve around sleep. What drives people to use others? What about conspiracies and big companies? Do you believe in ghosts? Can you trust what you see? Can you trust yourself? Sleepless took me on different paths with outstanding landscapes and reminded me you don’t need to sleep for the monsters and nightmares to get to you.

Now, if I could, I’d like to let Louise Mumford know that I need MORE. Call it Restless, and give us more thrills, and answers! Pretty please! The ending left me breathless, almost as if I’d just woken up in the middle of the night, hands tightened around my sheet. Was it real? Was it all? Is this the end? What do I do now?

I recommend Sleepless to all of us battling with sleep, but also to everyone who loves an intricate thriller which majestically knits a tight and suffocating plot about how the suffering of some can be used for… the greater good… until it goes wrong.

This book is insane and freaky, it’s good and addictive, and right at all the right places!

I really loved the science fiction/ dystopian vibe this book created. As someone who only occasionally dips her toes into science fiction writing, this book was enthralling and unputdownable. I had to know what happened to Thea. I also found the world building, the remote island where the sleep experiment happens, the technology all very plausible and well constructed. I also loved the characters of Viv, Thea’s mum and Ethan, Rory and Rosie.

The only criticism I have for the book is that the plot dragged along for the last quarter. From the lighthouse scene to the end the plot was lagging and there wasn’t enough side plot to keep a reader interested until they made their escape. Then the last few chapters felt rushed and jarring in comparison. Throwing into the mix drones, fire and bloodshed. However, I think that the clunkiness with plot is to be expected with a debut author and so it isn’t something I want to dwell heavily on.

I want to reinforce this is a very promising author. To convince a reader like myself to read more science fiction is a great compliment to the book. This novel was a really enjoyable read and I was happy with the plot points all the way along. I think it’s more science fiction than thriller but the thriller elements were executed wonderfully too. A fast paced read that any adrenaline junky reader will love. I look forward to seeing what this author writes next.

Thanks to HQ, the author and Netgalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book was mad, honestly, I couldn't put it down! What starts as this strange, creepy sleep trial, held on a tiny island with no phone signal, becomes this wild, fast paced game of cat and mouse! It's hard to keep up at times and feels like the characters spend most of their time running around the island.


I liked Thea, the main character and also her mother Vivian who has her own chapters. I also enjoyed the ending, I can't say anymore than that but I like how it was left.


This is by no means a perfect book and I don't think everyone will enjoy it. It involves a bit of suspension of belief and the writing isn't perfect. But I found it an enjoyable read that certainly had me gripped til the final pages! My advice, download a kindle sample if you can and give it a go! 

This was an unputdownable thriller to the point that I was scared to even go to sleep. It crazy what technology people can invent and this book was frighteningly inventive to the point it could be believable.