One thing Scarlett Thomas's books never are is formulaic. The Sleepwalkers is the tale of newly-weds Richard and Evelyn and their ill-starred Honeymoon. Already uneasy as her mother-in-law has not only paid for the trip but also chosen the time and location Evelyn is less than thrilled to to find that there's a big storm approaching,insecure to find the place full of "the beautiful people" and taken aback when their Hotel's owner ignores her while having very obvious designs on Richard. Things can only get better.....except they don't,they get a whole lot worse as the couple learn of deaths the previous year and the plans of a pair of very strange filmmakers to dramatise the fatal event.
The story is told in the format of letters left by the couple for each other after being split up with their version of events on their honeymoon,dark,surreal and horrific events. Also revealed in the letters as the tale unfolds are their personal histories, let's just say that theirs was not the average romance.
As you'd expect from Scarlett Thomas there are plenty of surprises, a lot of dark humour and quirky and oddball characters are the norm.
Great fun and excellent entertainment.

The Sleepwalkers follows a newly married couple who’ve been booked into a hotel on a small Greek Island as a wedding present, finding themselves the only guests at the end of the season. When they check in, the Villa Rosa’s owner greets Richard warmly, almost flirtatiously, but gives Evie the cold shoulder. A revelation made at their wedding has made them both feel their relationship is doomed, made worse by the discovery that another couple drowned recently, one attempting to save the other who slept walked into the sea. When two other guests turn up, interested in turning the sleepwalkers’ story into a movie, things take a decidedly odd turn.
I’m wary of saying too much about this gripping novel which plays with the thriller genre, leaving its readers handing on by their fingertips. Thomas presents her story as a series of documents – letters, transcripts, notebook pages – some written by Evie, some by Richard, others by hotel guests – several fragmented. Evie is a particularly pleasing unreliable narrator and it’s her letters that make up the bulk of the story, small bombshells let off as she tries to piece what happened to the sleepwalkers and why, while telling us her own story. I thoroughly enjoyed this clever smartly constructed novel, its tension kept taut right up to the end.