Review: The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian

Parasomnias are a big part of the plot in The Sleepwalker. They are more than just sleepwalking, There are additional sleep problems like sleep sex, night terrors, and nightmares. Typically a person experiencing a parasomnia might be hard to wake and once awake they might not remember at all what happened while they were experiencing the episode.

Lianna's mother is a sleepwalker. One night while everyone is asleep, she leaves the house and disappears. It's presumed she was sleepwalking and something happened to her that prevented her coming home. Lianna experienced episodes of sleepwalking and night terrors when she was younger. Now she is worried a little about what might happen to her and her sister if they experience the same sort of behaviors.

During a massive search for her mother, Lianna meets a detective with the State Police who was also a friend of her mother. Gavin and her mother had formed their own sort of mini support group since they had parasomnias in common. Lianna finds herself drawn to the detective. They begin a covert sort of dating relationship.

The Ahlberg family doesn't want to give up hope on finding Annalee, but the longer she is gone, the less likely it is they will recover her alive. This kind of tension in the family is hard on them all, but particularly it would seem on Paige, Lianna's younger sister.

The mystery continues for the rest of the book. There are red herrings and suppositions. As the book progresses, the speed of the action increases. By the time I reached the end I was reading as fast as I could. It was a real page turner.

Structurally, each chapter is introduced by what could be a journal entry by another voice. The rest of the book is pretty much written from Lianna's point of view. You wonder who it is that is saying the things in the beginning of the chapter about their experiences with parasomnias. As the mystery goes on, the things seem to take on more and more potential for revelation, but without an identity.

The writing is beautiful. The sentence structure is varied and words are well chosen.

Overall, I give t his book 5 out of 5 possible stars. It's a good mystery/thriller written beautifully. Lianna makes a great narrator. I liked the structure of the different voice at the beginning of each section. And I stayed up half the night to finish it risking a book hangover, but I had to know what was going to happen next. This is the first book I've read by this author. I will have to read more of his works,

If you enjoy books where you might learn a little (in this case about parasomnias)  and a  mystery that becomes a bit of a thriller then you should find this book enjoyable.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Teaser Tuesday: The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Ambrosia of The Purplebooker.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

And so when the state police from the New Haven barracks were interviewing Paige and me later that morning while they waited for my father to fly home from Iowa City, they probed the possibility that our mother had run off or was having an affair. (location 409)

.........................................................................

It was infuriating and I felt my family was being violated. I understood why they had to ask, but that did not make this line of investigation seem any less absurd or, on some level I could not quite parse at the time degrading. (location 413)

Lianna and Paige are speaking to the state police because their mother has gone missing presumably during a bout of sleepwalking.

I'm not that far into the book yet, but I'm enjoying it. While these two sentences are very long, in general, the sentence length is varied.

The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian is due out January 10, 2017 from Doubleday Books.

What's your teaser this week? Share it or a link in the comments. Are you enjoying your book? Let us know! Happy Reading!

Waiting on Wednesday #156: The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly event hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases we are eagerly anticipating. 

Synopsis from Goodreads:

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Guest Room comes a spine-tingling novel of lies, loss, and buried desire the mesmerizing story of a wife and mother who vanishes from her bed late one night. 
When Annalee Ahlberg goes missing, her children fear the worst. Annalee is a sleepwalker whose affliction manifests in ways both bizarre and devastating. Once, she merely destroyed the hydrangeas in front of her Vermont home. More terrifying was the night her older daughter, Lianna, pulled her back from the precipice of the Gale River bridge. The morning of Annalee's disappearance, a search party combs the nearby woods. Annalee's husband, Warren, flies home from a business trip. Lianna is questioned by a young, hazel-eyed detective. And her little sister, Paige, takes to swimming the Gale to look for clues. When the police discover a small swatch of fabric, a nightshirt, ripped and hanging from a tree branch, it seems certain Annalee is dead, but Gavin Rikert, the hazel-eyed detective, continues to call, continues to stop by the Ahlbergs' Victorian home. As Lianna peels back the layers of mystery surrounding Annalee's disappearance, she finds herself drawn to Gavin, but she must ask herself: Why does the detective know so much about her mother? Why did Annalee leave her bed only when her father was away? And if she really died while sleepwalking, where was the body? 

Conjuring the strange and mysterious world of parasomnia, a place somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, The Sleepwalker is a masterful novel from one of our most treasured storytellers." 

The Sleepwalker is due out January 10, 2017 from Doubleday Books.

Why am I waiting on this book? The whole sleepwalking angle is fascinating to me. And I find I would like to know what really happened to Annalee Ahlberg.

What book are you waiting on this week? Share it or a link in the comments so we can check it out and maybe add it to our ever-growing TBR lists. Thanks for coming by!