Sleeping Beauties

A Novel

By: Stephen King, Owen King

Narrated by: Marin Ireland

In this spectacular New York Times bestselling father/son collaboration that “barrels along like a freight train” (Publishers Weekly), Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high-stakes stories: what might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?

In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare. One woman, the mysterious “Eve Black,” is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain?

Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanted to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world. Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a woman’s prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously dramatic father-son collaboration that feels particularly urgent and relevant today.

I've Read and Listened to Every King Book

I've read and listened to every King book and I guess you could say he is my favorite author. I didn't finish this one. The story held my interest, but didn't rivet me and quite honestly, I forgot about it until now. It has an interesting and unique concept and I think it's worth the read if nothing else is floating your boat, but I'm pretty sure this is the only King novel I've never finished. I probably will one day, but today is not that day.

Good idea but way too long

This book could have been so much better if only it wasn’t so long. So many characters to keep track of made it a bit confusing. But the idea was certainly interesting.

The Never Ending Story

Meh, typical Steven King. There are so many characters though that it gets confusing - by the end, you just want it to be over. The narrator is okay - she does a good job differentiating between the old hillbilly guy and the young hillbilly inmate, but throughout the book there's this annoying tendency to hush the end of the sentences. I found myself constantly having to adjust the volume. One minute, one of the speakers would be almost whispering, the next would be a shrill hillbilly falsetto that drove straight into your eardrum. Ouch. Kind of an interesting concept, but I would wait for the cliff notes.

The story didn’t do it for me

The narration of this book was fantastic but the story just seem to pander so much to women as victims that it was almost an insult and I’m sure it was insulting to many men. He completely ignores the real risk to women that if they chose to stay what might become of their bodies back where they were cocooned. I won’t say more since I don’t want to give anything away, but if you read the book you know what I mean. I think that would’ve been one of my first concerns. It’s like the whole story just tried to teach a moral lesson and the authors weren’t even subtle about it. I love Stephen King, but this was disappointing.

Not Kings Best

Too long, formulaic, weird when you kind of expect it and dull too much of the story. Perhaps this was going to be an entry for American Horror Story.

The performance could use some work

While this book wasn't my favorite, the absolute worst part about it, is the reading of the Appalachian accents. It's borderline offensive, especially for a person who has an Appalachian accent. It's extremely distracting.

Worst narration i have ever heard.

Since i spend two hours a day commuting, I listen to a ton of audio books. This was by far the worst narration I have ever heard. When the narrator wasn’t speaking in the insulting WV accent, she was completely monotone and sound like a very early version of a computer generated voice like Siri.

A bit boring, too long

I’ve been reading King novels since 1995. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this novel as previous ones, such duma key or under the dome (to mention recent ones) or the stand and the DT series

Disappointed

This was just ok. I had a lot of hopes for this book especially being an avid S.King reader. Just was a let down.

A Must Read “hear”

I am a woman. I am a long time fan of Stephen King. Honestly, I had never read any work of Owen King so I had no register to gauge the difference. This book was seamlessly written by the two authors and I would have said it was a “classic” S King. I have found as I age similarly beside S King that he resonates something so honest about human nature that the books actually “solidify” thoughts or truths within me. This book is not a “fear” based concept for me. It was very moving in a way, strangely, that I wouldn’t have thought men could write. Men of the world, take heed for the world is a scary place right now. You are still at the helm and Stephen and Owen....Bravo.
The reader, Marin Ireland, was phenomenal. A reader makes or breaks the book and she made this book sing to me.