Mackenzie Cadenhead

When reading a YA novel, I always try not to be the judgmental adult slash parent of a teenager. I know teenagers do things that they shouldn’t. I know they experiment with sex and alcohol. I know teenagers can be cruel, fighting for every modicum of status in a rigorous hierarchy of cliques and groups. To pretend otherwise is naive and asking for trouble. Therefore, I expect these sorts of behaviors in novels geared towards teenagers, and I push aside any feelings of discomfort I have show more when thinking about my own children in similar situations. Unfortunately, Sleeper pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable in YA novels, making it a novel I neither enjoyed reading nor would recommend to others.

There have been numerous books about revenge over the years, and the best ones offer fascinating glimpses into the psyches of the victims as they perpetrate their revenge on their unsuspecting tormentors. While revenge is never the answer, these types of novels are always intriguing because they allow readers to live vicariously through those who are successful in enacting their revenge. These books do not condone revenge, but they are at least entertaining. With Sleeper however, there is something off about the revenge enacted by Sarah.

First, her plans are totally without forethought. She enters into each revenge action without a plan and with no concern about the repercussions other than her own feelings of satisfaction. Some of the things she does are horrible acts, violating bodies and privacy in ways that are downright disturbing, yet she only starts feeling a modicum of guilt after the situation has already spiraled out of control.

Then there is the issue of pacing. The story progresses too rapidly to allow for any deliberation or even character development so we never see Sarah’s victims beyond her own tainted thoughts. We never really learn if the punishment is deserving of the crime, if the girls she harms are truly deserving of revenge. We only get Sarah’s version, and she is too emotional to believe. If I am going to be able to condone someone’s behavior, I need more than her word for it that someone else deserves the nasty treatment she metes out to others.

Finally, there are the punishments themselves. We are not talking about a Mean Girls’ type burn book or the sharing of secrets here. We are talking about forcing classmates to do things against their will, violating their most private secrets, and sharing them with the world. We are talking about secretly drugging classmates so that they are oblivious to this happening to them, and therein lies my biggest problem with this novel. While Ms. Cadenhead is not necessarily condoning secretly drugging others, there is way too much of it occurring for someone not to walk away from the book with the idea that it is possible to do so without getting caught. Unbelievably, there is no punishment for those actions. One could argue that the state Wes is in at the end of the novel is punishment enough, but it is not. Neither Sarah nor Wes ever face the consequences of the drugging or of their actions against schoolmates.

What this novel is is one giant temper tantrum by a teenage girl who experiences social isolation at the hands of her “friends” because they do not know about her disorder and therefore overreact when confronted with it. There are so many different directions Ms. Cadenhead could have taken with this plot that could have been helpful in reminding readers that everyone that age is just trying to fit in, that true friends will stand by you, that the upper echelons of popularity are not the objective of high school. Instead, Sarah jumps into the deep end, using experimental drugs on others – drugs they do not know they are taking – as a way to make herself feel better. It is wrong on so many levels.

Sarah and her new love interest are despicable on so many levels, and neither one has the charisma or character development to pull off the evil villain vibe while remaining interesting. Sarah rationalizes her behavior as being a strong, independent woman, but one smile from Wes has all of her potential doubts rapidly disappearing. So much for being strong and independent. As for Wes, he epitomizes what is wrong with our culture with its vilification of rape victims and protection of rapers. I finished the novel hoping that there would be one final lesson that everything Sarah and Wes do is fundamentally wrong, and I remain disappointed that there was none. Sleeper is not the type of novel we need right now as we fight against increasing misogyny and a government that supports the groper in chief. show less

OH! I have such mixed feelings on this title. The premise lured me in, but the story veered a bit from my expectations - which is both good and bad. This is a book with a lot of twists and turns, which typically is a good thing.
The biggest twist for me here was the protagonist, Sarah - while she starts out as a victim, she becomes rather unlikable - and a bit unreliable as a narrator because her perspective becomes a bit warped. I read the story with a mix of fascination and horror, show more uncomfortable at the premise of taking control over another's body and having things forced upon them against their will or knowledge crosses a clear moral line, and the horror in part was with those actions themselves.
However, I appreciated that the author let Sarah grow from a moral perspective, and the book wrapped up nicely. This was a book that made me uncomfortable and, for a while at least, struggling to like the characters, but kept me in there to the end. show less

I was planning to glance at it and read it later, but three hours afterward, I'd finished it. An extra star for sheer creativity. Anyone who has ever had sleep issues (does that leave anyone out???)will shiver at some point while reading the story. There's a fine line between madness and desperation and Wes dances back and forth across it for most of the story, making him relatively sympathetic. This is a good book for those who like a solid creep factor when reading.

This was a really difficult book for me to read and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It’s not something I’d recommend to anyone under late teens due to some difficult scenes. The writing was intense, thrilling and suspenseful but at the same time parts of the storyline seemed disturbingly heavy for a YA book that didn’t carry any implications to the reader for what lay in the pages. The plot is fast paced and a real page turner even through the parts that made my skin crawl. I show more felt like I needed a shower after reading some of those scenes. Sleep disorders, astral projection, pseudo possession and medication effects of experimental drugs were all intriguing concepts particularly how MacKenzie Cadenhead uses them as plot devices.

Why I’m having such a hard time with this book were the areas where it was implied that Sarah and possibly others were assaulted but it wasn’t handled well. No one was held responsible for what they did and their actions weren’t held to the scrutiny of being considered assault. There was no true discourse on Sarah witnessing her own violation without being able to do anything about it or what she did in response. The controlling and psychologically disturbing relationship between Sarah and Wes made me want to stage an intervention while filing a restraining order against him; there was way too much realism in that to feel comfortable reading any scenes with them together.

I think Cadenhead’s writing style is vivid and she has done a great job capturing the difficulties of social bullying, psychological torture, fear of physical assault as the “Mean Girls” take things to a new level and peer pressure. However, I felt a huge disservice was done to assault victims when there was this incredible opportunity to showcase the realities of those who take advantage of others when they’re vulnerable and the consequences they should face. The closest we get to a moral understanding of the severity of what is being done is when one of the characters admits they’re abusing the power that’s been given to them but it took a tragic incident to get there. show less