The Sleep Experiment: An edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller (World's Scariest Legends)

This is the first book by Jeremy Bates I have read. I don't know how I have missed his books!! The genre is my favorite and he is a fantastic writer. The book is exciting, scary and intriguing. I love the way he writes and I will buy EVERY book of his!!

The book has a unique storyline which I appreciate since that seems to be getting harder to do these days. There were a few editing mistakes, but not too many overall. The book took a while to engage me however, as I thought it was a very slow start. I particularly don't like when novels delve too far into mundane issues of people's day to day lives and history especially when it has little to do with the story overall. It just bores me and I end up skipping pages. There was a bit of this in the beginning. The book did eventually pick up speed and get more interesting with quite a bit of action. That was when I started really enjoying the book.

Creepy, Addictive, and Utterly Unforgettable! The Sleep Experiment is a dark and gripping psychological thriller that completely pulled me in. The story is intense, twisted, and deeply disturbing in the best way possible. Jeremy Bates does an incredible job building suspense and exploring the horrors of the human mind. I couldn’t put it down. The tension keeps building, and just when you think it can’t get worse... it does. If you love dark thrillers with a psychological edge, this one’s a must-read!

The Sleep Experiment by Jeremy Bates is a chilling horror tale that will keep readers turning the pages. In 2018, Dr. Roy Wallis, the head of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley is attempting a sleep deprivation experiment using a stimulant gas. With two Australian test subjects under surveillance around the clock, he and his two student assistants (Penny Park and Guru Rampal) will record their findings. These will include general observations as well as various test results. The experiment is scheduled to last twenty-one days. But the situation soon becomes a nightmare. Wallis is fashionable, ambitious, and determined to see the experiment through to its end. Penny is sharp, has a sardonic sense of humor, is an extrovert, and she’s attracted to older men. Guru is intelligent and hopes to eventually help reform the health care system in India. The two test subjects are Sharon and Chad, who met while traveling in Europe, and have become friends. While the prologue and last day of instruction chapters were interesting, the book pacing quickly slows to a crawl as readers gain insight into the various characters during the next two chapters. The following few days get more interesting as readers see how the test subjects behave as they experience boredom, lack of privacy, and endless tests that show physical and mental changes. Readers need to be prepared for a chilling, horrifying, and action-filled horrifying finish. Themes include human experiments, ethics, sleep deprivation, values, and much more. Overall, this is a book that kept me turning the pages after a slow start to see what would happen next. It was initially intriguing and this was followed by shocking. I purchased a copy of this novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. Publication date was July 7, 2019.

I was hesitant when I saw this was based around the famous sleep experiment creppypasta but after I read a few chapters I was hooked, I finished the book in a couple of days, the way it’s written it gives the right amount of details to the story and it’s not like just fantasy based with made up facts it has real scientific knowledge to support the sleep experiment described so it sounds very plausible and like it really did happen, or could happen, it gave good back story on the main character and the supporting characters, but again what I really liked was all the scientific knowledge in the text, I highly recommend, I’m even going to order the real book itself too keep that’s how much I enjoyed it 🫶🏼

Overall this book in a good read. Beginning with complaints the story's epilogue ending felt a bit forced and potentially unnecessary. In addition the character Brooke had an unremarkable resolve. I desperately wanted her to succeed in her mission near the end of the book (without giving plot points away.) Some of the pacing and side scenes seemed a little unnecessary however, they were few and far between. read of stereotypical characters from other reviewers before reading the book and typically found them nonexistent 95% of the time. Sure, it begins a bit like it but they seem to disappear as the story progresses. The climax is very well written aside from a chase scene before the final climax. I was engaged throughout and read it in a two day sitting. I felt the characters were strong and held their own through the story and even one of the female characters who I had despised during the first half of the book had made me feel sympathy when things took a turn for her. I personally loved the grotesqueness when the experiment takes a hold of the lab rats. The vivid imagery and startling realization that there was no turning back made for a great test of character for another character. blah blah blah, it was a good read.

The promotional blurbs on the cover, etc. say this writer is like Stephen King. I disagree. I'm an avid King reader, and this book doesn't read like King to me; rather, I think Bates has his own unique style. Very good character development, especially of the antihero's character. It's very well done and very troubling. My only problem (reason for four instead of five stars) is with realism. This is not fantasy genre. It's set in specific, real locations (Berkeley, Oakland, S.F., and Marin County's Samuel P. Taylor Park), during a specific time-frame (May - June 2018). As such, it should be true to life. We should have accurate descriptions of the settings. But the realism gets blown early on when he states that a day in May 2018, in Berkeley, was "humid." It wasn't humid. I was there, I know. The Bay Area is rarely, if ever, humid. If he wanted to set the story in a humid locale, he could have used Houston, TX or a number of other places instead. A few weeks later in the story, a HUGE, massive rain storm with lots of thunder, lightening and wind, rips through Berkeley (June 2018). It didn't. Again, I was there, I know. The Bay Area rarely, if ever, has summer storms, especially of that magnitude. If the author absolutely had to have the storm, perhaps he could have included some dialogue about a freak summer storm, the like as hasn't been seen in the SF Bay Area in over a century. That could make it plausible, at least. If I hadn't grown up in S.F. Bay Area all my life, I probably wouldn't have noticed the weather / storm issues. But since I have (and was there in May-June 2018), I was kinda like "WTF?" while reading those things. But again, except for these details, it was an excellent story.

I enjoyed reading this book. My first from this author. I look forward to reading more of his work. I cannot imagine living a day to day life without any sleep. This opens your eyes to different possibilities.

Stats out with two willing participants and two willing observers along with the professor overseeing the sleep study. Can a human being go without sleep for 14 days? Or perhaps 21? Those are the ultimate questions for those who are participating. Myself, I treasure the sleep I get every night. Sleep is very important to me. I can’t go more than two nights without sleeping without feeling the psychological, physical and emotional pain. This experiment or sleep study turned into a psychological nightmare for everyone involved. It truly is the best psychological thriller I have read.

Loved this book so much, had plenty of twists and a great ending. Jeremy never fails to deliver scarily feasible horror.

I have read all the books from this author, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every single one, but this is the first that I’ve read in one sitting. I found myself getting emotionally attached to all the characters. The book is full of twists and turns and although I predicted the end it didn’t spoil the enjoyment of the book in any way. I think this book is suitable for readers of Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Bentley Little to name just a few. Buy it, you won’t be disappointed at all.

L'idée est originale , mais le récit tarde à commencer , avec trop de considérations sur la vie privée du personnage principal . Toutefois le récit reste prenant , et rempli de suspense .

So, the good: everything that has to do with the actual experiment The bad: the ending kinda defeats the point of the story The could-be-better: drop all the chapters wasted on the researchers' personal lives My advice, read the last chapter but not the epilogue, it seriously ruins most of the story's positives