Devoted wife and mother by day. Sleepwalker by night.Iris Goddard is missing. She’s left the bed, and the front door is wide open…Her husband, Nicholas, and their son are terrified for her safety. Chrome Valley’s streets aren’t safe on a Friday night, and for a sleepwalker dressed only in her nightgown, it’s as dangerous as hell.The truth about Iris’s condition simmers deep in her … Iris’s condition simmers deep in her subconscious—and it needs avenging, no matter the cost to herself or her family. Now, Nicholas must brave Chrome Valley’s underworld to rescue her. The countdown to retribution has begun, and Iris has no idea of the nightmare she’s sleepwalking into… or does she?
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*Note: The Chrome Valley Thrillers are interconnecting tales of mind-bending suspense, and contain adult themes and language. For mature audiences only.more
This is a fantastic book! It’s so well written that I felt that I was in the main character, Iris’s head, walking around seeing through her eyes, It was like watching a movie. There was plenty of action especially when she wanders into the worst part of town, I’d laugh in some parts and cry in others. I watched as her family desperately searched for her and heard her secrets but then, when Iris was in so much trouble, guns were firing, people dying, it became really gory, so bad that I couldn’t read any more. I went back about a week later because I kept thinking about the story and I had to know what happened, so I skipped the gory bits and finished the book. It was definitely worth continuing and I might have missed something because the end was really confusing! This is a voluntary review and I thought about only giving Andrew four stars but I realised that I couldn’t cope with the gory parts because his writing is so good, it’s definitely worth five and I really recommend it to adults who like psychological thrillers. If you can’t read the gory bits you can always skip it but if you get that far I’m pretty sure you’ll finish it, you won’t be able to stop!
This first book in the Chrome Valley Thriller series by Andrew Mackay is indeed an edge of your seat thrill ride as the reader attempts to make sense out of this psychological puzzler. This reader was never sure exactly what was real and what was not, even with the day and night scenes being distinctly separated from each other due to the author’s expert manipulation of the characters, their surroundings and their actions. Yes, the book deals with some very dark and some very disturbing subject matters such as incest, racism, and revenge, and uses these as fuel for the subsequent events. This is a voluntary review of an Advanced Reader Copy of this book.
I could hardly put this book down, but at the same time found myself needing to take breaks from the intensity of it. It’s not a pretty story and you’ll find yourself wondering what’s real and what might be just in Iris’s mind. This book can really get under your skin!
Somnambulist
Good characters and an interesting story that makes you think is it a dream or is it really happening very often as the story progresses
I tried several times to read this book but it just never took hold for me. I read some other reviews and didn’t see what others were reading. I had a difficult time following from one day to the next and then it seemed like it was back on the first day. I don’t like to give negative reviews for a genre I didn’t like so I am giving this one three stars. Not my cup of tea.
I received a free copy of this book and I am voluntarily leaving my honest review.
Wow! I’m speechless! This was a combination of science fiction, paranormal, romance, mystery, abuse, insanity and humor all rolled into one. You wouldn’t think all these would go together, but if you have read any of the authors other books, you would see that this is how he rolls. Awesome!
The mystery part was very hard to figure out. Each time I thought I had it, there would be a turn of events. The science fiction and paranormal I feel come from the thugs in the warehouse. How stupid can you be? Well these guys didn’t have a brain between them. Romance comes from a husband and wife and how he looks after her at night because she sleeps walks. The abuse was kinda hard to read, but it is a very important part of the mystery and why she sleep walks. Humor, I found myself giggling throughout the whole book. Those thugs and the chase down the highway was so stupid on their part, that I couldn’t help giggling at it.
So if you want an corky read with a strange storyline and even stranger ending and all kinds of stuff in between, then this is definitely your book. I 100% recommend this book!
Interesting concept for a mystery. It starts out with Iris, a sleepwalking wife, who for 30 years or so has had this problem. It’s getting worse and attempts to keep her in the house are not working. In only a nighty she walks the streets of Chrome Valley, so starts this intriguing book. The reader is taken to her nightly adventures into the wrong part of town and to day time dramas with Sammy her son in grade school and her husband Nicholas who tries to stay on top of things. I believe she is also hallucinating from lack of sleep. What I really like about the writers story is the way it unfolds. You are only given little tid bits at a time so the story stays fresh and little is telegraphed as to where the reader is being led. If you like mysteries, bad guys, missing persons and justice. The story reminds me of a Hitchcock or Scorsese movie. If you like suspense and mystery you will enjoy this book. I do want to note, anyone sensitive to sexual abuse issues may find this a hard read but to the authors credit the details of the incident are not present.
I was given a free copy of the book by the author in exchange for an honest review.
What do you know about sleepwalking? Ever experience it yourself?
This story is a thriller using sleepwalking as the method of drama. (Which it is or can be in real life!) It uses day and night to help you “distinguish between the dream and real”. The chapter labels help. Until they appears to cords over.
The book reminds of a couple of movies: “Shutter Island” and “Memento”. What is real and what is not.
I finally came up with my answer when I read the blurb above. What is yours?
the book will keep you intrigued to find out what is going on. I did find some of it a bit far fetched when reading but now that I have y answer, it makes sense. Lots of symbolism here so be careful.
This is my honest and freely given review. I did receive an ARC book.
This is a strange, eerie, dark, psychological horror story. Part of the time it reads as if it is a dream, but which is a dream and which is real is the question. There is something wrong with Iris, but nobody, including herself, knows what, or what can be done to help her. Her husband of 30-odd years and her young son know something is wrong, but don’t know what; we don’t find out until Chapter XVIII (pay attention to the Roman or Arabic chapter numbers – they are significant). Relatives and friends try to live with her weirdness and try to keep her from hurting herself. Then things get totally out of control. The timeline of the story is twisted, going back and forth, from one viewpoint to another. It is a dystopian vision full of pain, suffering, trauma, anguish, and death. It is hard to read the story without taking breaks to restore reality. If you want a really intense experience, this is for you. Don’t expect humor (although there is often gallows humor) or happily ever after. And be sure to read the Author Notes for a better understanding of the story.
Wow! A Thriller That Keeps You Captivated! I could not put this book down. It kept me up beyond late many nights until I finished it. Having a son who was a sleepwalker as a young child was hard to cope with. I was curious to see if there were any similarities in the description by the author. But wow! I read this with a pounding heart and many times caught myself holding my breath! A staggeringly descriptive thriller with fantastical viewpoints! Made my short experience with sleepwalking a breeze and it will no longer bother me. Excellent story telling!
Meet Iris, a woman plagued with severe somnambulism. At the beginning of this book, we initially are led to believe that the sleepwalking incidents are a nuisance, but nothing too worrisome. However, as the book progresses, strange events transpire. Are they reality, dream, or a bad acid trip? The timeline is somewhat skewed, and each time an event is re-visited, there are changes in perspective and in how the events unfold, from the mundane to the bizarre. Woven throughout this book is subtle, macabre humor. If you enjoy an intense horror story that features a psychological component, you will enjoy this book.
Iris Goddard wakes every morning at 5:59 am, flinging herself into a sitting position and gasping for air. This pre-dawn drama is familiar to her husband, Nicholas.
Or is it?
Somnambulist offers readers dual universes — a day world, where the chapters are even, counted by Roman numerals, and life, while challenging, is somewhat normal. In the night world, however, the chapters are odd, headed by decimal numbers, and Iris sleepwalks barefoot through the seediest neighborhoods of Chrome Valley, where she’s entangled with ruthless criminals while relentlessly pursuing the source of the all-encompassing pain that propels her.
In the day world, Iris confronts her son’s elementary school principal over Sammy’s drawing of a wrecked tractor-trailer with odd-looking bodies scattered around it. In the night world, Abdul and Freddie have driven a tractor-trailer across six borders, but Abdul forgot to shut down the freezer unit.
In the day world, Iris tells her sister, Irene, that she hired a private detective to track down the source of her never-ending pain. In the night world, Iris confronts that source with a savage vengeance that decimates Chrome Valley.
In the day world, Iris tells her son she never wants to hear him utter the n-word, a taunt he repeated when confessing why he hit a boy on the playground. In the night world, its ubiquity highlights the negative value its users assigned to human life.
In a degraded world that could only occur in the universe of Trump and Brexit, Iris walks between day and night, a seemingly helpless victim in one, a tough survivor in the other. Eighteen-wheelers careen through streets sideswiping cars and mowing down nightclub patrons, spewing death. Versions of the number seven pop up everywhere. Grandmothers quail before pitiless grandchildren with laser insight. Husbands frantically hide keys and lock bedroom doors to prevent exit. Gunmen mauled and disfigured by gunfire reanimate and chase their enemies while holding their shattered jaws together. Gangsters wear wedding dresses and sprout wings of fury. A new designer drug renders users catatonic and functions as the newest street currency. And hulking in the background of both worlds are the bleak tower blocks of the Freeway Five.
Somnambulist is as much social commentary as it is a horror novel, creating nightmare scenarios straight from 2019’s debauched global community. Slaughter the immigrants, hate other races, attack those who dare cross matrimony’s color line. Torture those whose are comfortable with their sexuality and gender fluidity; indiscriminately loose automatic weapons at anything in view. Rape and torment women without regret, except when forced to pay the price even a degenerate society might require.
While the novel is indeed a wild ride, it’s satire as much as terror: Quentin Tarantino in the UK, Once Upon a Time in Chrome Valley emblazoned on a theater marquee. A world populated by Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Xi Jinping, and the Mango Mussolini of the United States, a graphic, bloody, and vicious living nightmare of the past five years. Dead bodies resemble children’s toys, abused females morph into mermaids, unrepentant abusers dissolve into fiery elephants, all as the tractor-trailer rolls by.
Readers horrified by racially degrading language, inventive cursing, plentiful violence and a plethora of gore should not read this novel. Those unable to glimpse beyond the literal will not reap the rewards of this story. However, those who have walked through their own Chrome Valleys of the shadow of death will bond with this story, acknowledge it from the despair of their souls and hearts, and use it to press on in the darkness drawn with the devastating accuracy of Andrew Mackay.