The Sleepless

Manibo’s genre-bending debut is a wild ride. In a near future, a mysterious pandemic sweeps the world, leaving a quarter of the population incapable of sleeping; these unfortunate people are deemed Sleepless. When Jamie Vega, a Filipino American journalist and one of the Sleepless, finds his boss dead of an apparent suicide, he begins his own investigation, intent on proving it was murder. Things take a turn when he realizes he is the last person to have seen him alive, but gaps in his memory make his search increasingly dangerous. With explorations of technology, power, corporate greed, disease, and gender, this book provides a complex look at an intriguing near future. Filipino American narrator Joel de la Fuente brings out the tension in this gripping story. De la Fuente’s depiction of Jamie descending from his safe life as a journalist into an out-of-control world is chillingly believable.