‘Don’t close your eyes. Don’t fall asleep. Don’t let them in.’ - cover tag line.

My thanks to HarperCollins U.K. Audio for an advance copy, via NetGalley, of the audiobook edition of ‘Sleepless’ by Louise Mumford in exchange for an honest review. The audiobook is narrated by Helen Keeley and has a running time of 8 hours, 54 minutes at 1x speed.

This was an engaging novel that mixes elements of science fiction with an intense psychological thriller.

Its main character is Thea, an insomniac who hasn’t slept more than three hours a night for years. Then an ad for Morpheus, an innovative sleep trial, pops up on her phone. She eagerly accepts a place on the trial even though it involves travelling to a remote island and surrendering her mobile phone and personal possessions, including her shoes. Okay....

Thea’s mother, Vivian, has been an activist all her life and warns Thea that aspects of the trial sounds cult-like. It’s not long until Thea starts to think that her mother may have been right. She begins to investigate and naturally discovers that there is more going on. Plenty of action follows as Thea and her allies seek to exposure the truth and escape the locked down island.

Thankfully, I only experience insomnia rarely but rarely is quite enough thank you. In her Acknowledgments Louise Mumford shares that she is an insomniac and so had plenty of personal experience to serve as research. I certainly found Thea’s desperation to find a solution powerful. Mumford also captures the hallucinatory nature of dreams and the hypnagogic state.

I found Helen Keeley’s narration of the audiobook very assured. She has a lovely voice and an impressive CV in terms of audiobook narration over a wide variety of genres and I have previously enjoyed her work.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

A solid 4 star audiobook. Good story, kept me interested to the end.
Hard to believe it was the first book she's written!
Lovely bit of narration by Helen Keeley too - really nice job.

Sleeplessness has become an epidemic in our world. The more you crave it, the less you seem to be able to get. Thea hasn’t slept more than a few hours a night for as long as she can remember, so when she hears about a sleep trial clinic, she’s eager to sign up. The clinic has some odd rules, Thea isn’t allowed to have her cell phone or even leave her room without permission, but she’s finally sleeping, better than she has in years. Isn’t that enough to make her ignore any misgivings that she may have about the sleep trial’s odd rules? Why can’t she even have her shoes? It turns out that being an insomniac may not be the worst thing that can happen to a person, as Thea is about to discover

A good book can become a great audiobook with the right narrator and this is a great book that became exceptional with the quality of narration, exciting and intriguing, intelligent and suspenseful