Great book. Was up all night reading it. I loved the characters & the storyline. I totally recommend reading this book ASAP. Definitely 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I recently finished reading Awakened by Laura Elliot, which will be released June 2025. This book centers around a world in which people are implanted with chips that allow them to function with very limited sleep. The chips malfunction and people with it do not sleep at all and become animalistic. The story follows Thea, a scientist who helped create the technology, grappling with her current reality and working to fix the situation. A man and woman arrive at the facility that Thea lives in - their arrival change everything. I appreciated the writing style as well as a majority of the pacing in this book. The author allowed you to truly understood Thea’s thought process and reasoning as she is faced with ethical dilemmas. The ending was a bit confusing for me and felt too rushed, but overall I enjoyed reading this as the concept was fascinating!

This book is more like a journal which I usually like but for some reason the whole concept and story didn’t really fit in together. The overall theme of the story is nice and for trying something different I will rate it 3 out of 5.

This was an interesting story. It kind of reminded me of the movie Awake. I did like the science and research aspects of the story.

Found this dull, confusing and uninvolving. I gave up after 18% as I struggled to engage with the story of a group of scientists trying to navigate an apocalypse brought on my sleep problems.

This is a very well written book.

I was initially afraid it was going to be very zombie - and if you want very zombie, you might be disappointed.

Instead, it was a book that very much dealt with consequences, despair, and how we define humanity.

There are a lot of ethical and moral quandaries in this book and, while I didn't always agree with our characters and how they saw things, it was interesting to contemplate and there were very few easy answers.

A challenging and good read.

Thanks to Angry Robot and NetGalley for this ARC of 'Awakened' by Laura Elliott.

I went into this one expecting it to be a fairly standard dystopian zombie-adjacent book set in London but believe me when I say this is nowhere near your run of the mill, zombie apocalypse, survivorship outing.

I would liken it more to original Gothic masterpieces Frankenstein or Dracula (both mentioned in the book) where there's a deep and consistent musing about deeply philosophical matters - what it is to be human, what is the mind and where does it/should it live, medical ethics.

We get sketches of what London outside the Tower of London might look like and we know how the Sleepless got that way and how they behave but here is very little 'action' in this novel - although the blurb refers to it, I would say '28 Days Later' this is not but I can see the comparisons with 'The Girl With All the Gifts.' Much of the narrative happens in the form of conversations between characters within the Tower and internal conversations and memories that the main character, Thea, has with herself. And it requires you to really concentrate on and engage with what's being said.

Throughout the book there's a really illuminating thread about ME/chronic fatigue syndrome. As someone who has had a passing acquaintance through friends and family of those debilitating conditions, I learned more about their roots and how they and they've been demoted in some medical quarters to all being in the mind and sufferers demeaned as virtual hysterics - it's no coincidence that most sufferers are women and most doubters are not. It's really disgusting and heart-wrenching.

There are no easy answers or tidy outcomes in this book. The writing is intense and extremely well done and, as I mentioned above, despite the different era in which it's set, does really have the lofty sound and feel of those original masterpieces.

Congratulations to the author and the publisher.

WOW. I AM BLOWN AWAY.
This was psychological, existential, tense, emotional, probing.

If you liked Bird Box, Annihilation, Black Mirror - try this!

It is 2055. There’s an apocalypse. Civilisation has ended following an outbreak of the Sleepless - humans turned into feral monsters. To keep up with modern life, science designed a way to go without sleep. The small group of scientists responsible are trapped in the Tower of London, dealing with guilt, doubt, and desperately searching for a cure.

This is told from Thea’s perspective in dusty-like entries. Her path has been paved by her need to help her mother who has suffered from chronic fatigue.

When doctors don’t believe you, who else can you turn to for help?

<b>We all live with the awareness that we’re housed inside a perishable flesh sack that will one day rot away from us, leaving us with nowhere to go.
</b>
The writing was incredible: switching from introspection, records, memories, stream of consciousness….

The writing is intimate and emotional. The characters are panicked, flawed, scared, resilient.

There wasn’t a great sense of place. Similarly, the going-ins outside of the Tower was absent which could have been scary and fascinating. This did create claustrophobia and immediacy, yet made it more a character story than a true end of the world horror or thriller.

I also was not a fan of the last 20%. This was close to being a five stars before this.

<b>“Not just sleep, but rest. Sleep. Rest. Freedom. They are the same things. Those who would steal your rest would steal the very soul from within you. The means by which you exist as an autonomous creature. The means by which you become more than a machine, more than a mere organism, but an individual capable of life.”</b>

Physical arc gifted by Angry Robot.

Awakened by Laura Elliot @tinymeetsworld

Thank you to @netgalley , the author and @angryrobotbooks for this amazing ARC ♥️

As both a scientist, a chronic pain sufferer and a mother who is getting no sleep with a baby, this book hit me emotionally hard!! I was instantly completely immersed and nodding my head at so many parts.

Just the way in that science is portrayed, as both being clinical but managed by a human who has emotions, was done absolutely perfectly. I rarely reread books, but I’ll be getting a physical copy of this because I feel that I’ll get so much out of it on future reads also.

The writing style is fascinating; you’re very much in the mind of the main character Thea, who is an interesting persona to say the least, and I just loved that she battled with trying to advance science/research with ethics. People can view scientists as cold, uncaring and clinical but we are really not; we care about what we are doing and want to help people, and I love that the author recognised this and addressed it (thank you!).

It addresses chronic fatigue syndrome empathetically and people with pain conditions. So many quotes stood out to me. I loved this one “the problem with the pain scale and an outside perspective is that it presupposes a starting level of zero pain… from that starting point we then assume that anyone who’d suddenly found themselves at a pain level of nine would be screaming. But what happens when the starting point is a six or seven? What would be the point in screaming? Where does tolerance diminish and animal instinct kick in?” - Love this!!! As someone who has a damaged nervous system and my body doesn’t understand normal pain stimulus, I’m in constant pain. But I’m used to it, so I can manage life with it. Does it mean I’m not in pain? No! Like I said; this was an emotional read for me, even before I get into saying how exciting the premise is, the twist at the end and the on point character development.

I will end my ramble here, but it’s a 5 star from me, and if any of the above resonate with you, please do read it. And if not, then you’ll want to read it for the plot anyway!