Home :: Books :: Mystery & Thrillers  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers

Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Sleep No More

Sleep No More

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.99
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 .. 10 >>

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fairly Disappointing
Review: I am a big Greg Iles fan, but this one left me disappointed.

SPOILER ALERT: I kept hoping for the big 'Scooby Doo' ending, where we would learn who was inflicting this bizarre set of events on our protagonist - but it never happened. Instead, we were forced to accept that Mallory's soul was, indeed, transmigrating all over Natchez. Snore.
Also hard to swallow - the big twist at the end where we learn that being possessed by another soul changes your DNA.
Puh-leeze!!!
Finally, a note to the author - the passages that introduce Penn Cage were self-serving and self-aggrandizing. Please don't do that anymore.

I'm giving it a few stars due to the police investigation that slowly closed on Waters - that part was well written. The rest was pure hooey.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Heart-racing, stay up all night fun!
Review: Totally different, this is Iles first attempt at the paranormal. Few, if any, could pull off what he was able to accomplish - take a seemingly impossible idea, pepper it with a plausible plot, and you have a "winner-take-all" book! This is perhaps his best.
"Sleep No More" has so many twists and turns that the reader will never guess what's next. A seemingly innocent gesture (mouthing the word "Soon") by a beautiful woman takes a deprived but ambitious husband on a journey that may lead to his demise. What happens in 14 days is so incredible and eerily exotic but he learns quickly to believe in things that he never did before.
Does he actually "find" his first real love - a woman who died ten years ago or is he imagining it? Does what happened 20 years ago with her have any relevance with the beautiful woman he just met? Is he really willing to lose everything in order to recapture his past?
Don't try to figure this one out, dear reader. Don't read one word, one section, or one chapter and try to solve the mystery. Shake off the cynic in you and prepare yourself for an adventure you'll never forget. In it, each of us will find a part of himself or herself. Just go along for the ride. You'll understand "soon."

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great creepy fun
Review: So the subject matter is a little odd! Iles gives us his usual skills in writing a suspense thriller. It is a little disorienting to read a book in which you continually ask "what's going on?" instead of "who did it?". Maybe that's the idea. In most books we're usually quite comfortable while the characters are in deep trouble. Reading through this book will leave everyone a little uncomfortable.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Captivating until the end!
Review: Greg Iles does it again! I am so pleased that I found this wonderfully suspenseful author. His writing ability takes the reader to believe they would know the character(s) if they were to meet them on the street. Just when I thought I knew what will happen next I was udderly suprised! Don't pass this book or author up! He's addicting and I'm watching for more great reads from you, Greg Iles! Thanks for books well written.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Halfway finished and I can't take any more!
Review: It's going in the charity box, and the fact that I wasted a few hours of my life on this boring, predictable, novel pains me more than the wasted eight dollars. I was impressed with his descriptions of Natchez, where I've lived, but that's about it.
This was my first Greg Iles book, and will probably be my last. Spit on me once, shame on you . . . etc., and there are too many good books out there.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Kudos to Iles
Review: No wonder no less a literary personage than Mr Stephen King, master of the maccabre, himself praised this new novel by Greg Iles. The author has yet again expanded his scope in writing by slightly detouring around his usually thrilling subject matter into a slightly more ethereal world.
Why does the attractive Eve Sumner whisper soon to Oil geologist John Waters at a soccor game? This is a question Waters asked himself at the start of the tale, then spends much effort and sanity trying to convince others of the answer.
Once again Iles turns up the suspense and tension in his latest thriller, while at the same time causing the reader to think and ask some curious questions about what we believe of the afterlife, the nature of true love and sanity. Despite being slightly different from his previous works in tone I think Mr. Iles has maintained the thrill factor very well in this latest offering, and give him credit for having the courage to write a slightly different story than the kind his readers and fans have grown used to. I felt lumps in my throat in parts due to the high level of paranoia he invokes throughout Sleep No More. A very good title for horror fans that may not normally consider reading Iles and for thriller fans that expect more than typical thrills in their fiction.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Outstanding, as usual
Review: I am only recently acquainted with Mr. Ile's works. I have found all of his novels to be excellent and refreshingly original. Suffice it to say I have, in the last month or so (despite the new Preston/Child and J. Paul Wilson novels), managed to read all of his works except Spandau Phoenix and Black Cross.

I picked up Sleep No More this morning and finished it a few hours ago; couldn't put it down.

Mr. Ile's has a real talent for creating suspense and a remarkably original way of telling his stories. If you enjoy complex plots and love a really great storyteller, read Greg Iles.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Tiresome quasi supernatural mystery
Review: The most wearisome books are those by authors whose previous works you have enjoyed but who for some reason allow standards to slip and such is the case with this work by the usually dependable Greg Iles.
Set in Natchez ,Mississippi its protagonist is John Walters ,a petroleum geologist whose ordered world is not as serene as it might appear to be on the surface.His marriage to the cool and collected Lily is polite but loveless and held together mainly by love for their daughter Annalise ;his business partner is a drunk and a gambler and the company they own is under EPA investigation.
This is as nothing compared to the entry into his life of the realtor Eve Sumner who claims to be host to the spirit of the late Mallory Candler with whom he had shared a passionate affair prior to her suicide some years earlier .They begin an affair and reluctantly he begins to accept the validity of her claims absurd though they appear to his rational mind.Then ,waking up after a night of passion together, he finds Eve dead on the bed beside her.
This is not the end of the problem for not only is he fighting a potential murder rap ,but the spirit of Mallory is still loose and finds new homes-in the bodies of his wife and Cole.
The issue is how -if at all-he can free himself of her trouibled spirit and resume an even tenored life.
The plot is implausible and moves slowly towards an indecisive conclusion that had me sighing in exasperation

Put it down to a minor lapse and hope the authot gets back on track soon

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Karmic Revenge
Review: Greg Iles has a wonderful way of bringing the Gulf States alive with his intimate descriptions and knowledge of the Louisiana/Mississippi lifestyle. Bravo Mr. Iles for giving this part of the country a modern voice.
'Sleep No More' takes place in Natchez, MS where geologist John Waters, a semi-happily married man lives with his wife and daughter and battles the everyday anxieties and futilities of keeping his oil drilling business afloat. He thinks his two biggest problems are an EPA investigation which may clean him out financially and his womanizing partner and lifelong friend, Cole who is up to his neck in gambling debts and is draining capital from the partnership to sustain his habits. However, when Eve Sumners walks into his life, Waters misjudges the magnitude of his current problems; they seem small when compared to the mess of trouble she brings to his somewhat mellow existence. Somehow, Eve knows all the intimate details of a hot and steamy relationship that began at Ole Miss and eventually went sour; Eve claims she is Water's lost love, a woman who was killed by a rapist ten years earlier. Sickened, yet intrigued, Waters cannot move far enough out of her orbit; eventually he is sucked in and helplessly consummed. But when Eve is found in their trysting place dead, Water's problems multiple like the tribles in the classic Star Trek episode.

Iles builds his totally believable character of Waters expertly; the reader understands his torment, his fascination and his incredulity. Here is a solid citizen asked to believe the unbelievable.

The plot is a bit convoluted in places and Iles does ask you to suspend disbelief and play along with his premise. I must admit there were times I asked myself why I actually was buying the whole thing. Nevertheless, he does tie the whole package up neatly, loose strings and all, but whether or not this is as fundamentally enthralling as 'Mortal Fear' is questionable and a matter of taste. The activity and interplay between the set of characters is so complicated and perverse that overall the read just isnt as satisfying as some of Iles' earlier works. Be that as it may, it still held my attention, is certainly a fast read and recommended even if it is just to experience the modern day Gulf Coast from a writer that really knows and loves his territory.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Almost Nodded-Off With "Sleep No More!" A Disappointment!
Review: This is the first book I have read by Greg Iles. I have heard so much praise about his other novels, that when I saw this book on a friend's bookshelf, I asked to borrow it. My expectations dropped quickly as I began to read. The novel starts somewhat slowly and the pace declines with each page. Instead of focusing on the strange, (just plain weird!), new woman who enters John Waters' life, (he's our hero), Mr. Iles bogs the reader down with the myriad problems Waters is having with his business, marriage, his best friend and partner, etc.. All this initial information, which is admittedly essential, could have been woven into the storyline later, and tends to defuse the tension needed to develop suspense in this supernatural (not so thrilling) thriller.

John Waters is a petroleum geologist, and is co-owner of a successful business in Natchez, Mississippi. He and his wife Lily, along with their precocious 7 year-old daughter, Anneliese, live in a beautiful antebellum home in the suburbs of Natchez. The marriage had been a happy one, until Lily miscarried twice. The premature end to these pregnancies, along with the death of her father, sent Lily spiraling into depression. Although Lily is fully recovered when the novel begins, she and John have not experienced sexual intimacy for four years. This has placed a tremendous burden on the otherwise happy relationship, but John has remained faithful to his wife.

Then Eve Sumner, a beautiful, dark-haired real estate agent, who "gets around," suddenly enters John's life, and aggressively insists on meeting with him alone. She convinces Waters, with considerable effort, that she is really Mallory Candler, his first love, who was murdered ten years before. She is living in the body of Eve Sumner, and has taken over Sumner's personality completely. Apparently, through a series of bizarre soul transfers, beginning at the moment of her death, Mallory has occupied several bodies, intent on making her way back to John, the man she still loves...and also hates. Well, she has returned and wants him back NOW! John finds his long sought sexual release with Mallory/Evie, and sex is everything it always had been with her - kinky and unbelievably erotic! He becomes totally obsessed with her for a few weeks. When he realizes that he is risking the loss of his family, he tries to get out of the relationship, and serious trouble begins

Mr. Iles is a good writer, and he adds murder, mystery, deception, violence, infidelity, kinky sex, alcoholism, gambling, bad business deals, and an EPA investigation, to his tale of transferred souls. One would think this would be a real page-turner. But the novel fails somewhere along the way. Perhaps the narrative is too plot driven, and the characters too flat. I don't find them to be believable - although I have no problem getting into the supernatural. I did finish the book, but it was a tedious read. I gave it 3 stars, rather than 2, because of Mr. Iles' writing style, and because the plot's premise is interesting. I will eventually read one of Grag Iles other books to see if he is really as good as everyone says.


<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 .. 10 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates