When All the World Sleeps by Henry & Rock

Daniel Whitlock is terrified of going to sleep. And rightly so: he sleepwalks, with no awareness or memory of his actions. Including burning down Kenny Cooper’s house—with Kenny inside it—after Kenny brutally beat him for being gay. Back in the tiny town of Logan after serving his prison sentence, Daniel isolates himself in a cabin in the woods and chains himself to his bed at night.

Like the rest of Logan, local cop Joe Belman doesn’t believe Daniel’s absurd defense. But when Bel saves Daniel from a retaliatory fire, he discovers that Daniel might not be what everyone thinks: killer, liar, tweaker, freak. Bel agrees to control Daniel at night—for the sake of the other townsfolk. Daniel’s fascinating, but Bel’s not going there.

Yet as he’s drawn further into Daniel’s dark world, Bel finds that he likes being in charge. And submitting to Bel gives Daniel the only peace he’s ever known. But Daniel’s demons won’t leave him alone, and he’ll need Bel’s help to slay them once and for all—assuming Bel is willing to risk everything to stand by him.

When I started reading this book, I had a pretty good idea as to where the story was going. But as I progressed further into the story I was completely caught off guard with how the story played out, and what ended up happening!  This book is one that does go down in the books to remind us to never judge a book by its cover, or blurb. I can say that this writing duo has a really great ability to bring the words from the pages and drag you into their stories.

It was so insane reading about the things that Daniel would do to himself because he was afraid of sleeping, and there were times where it felt like my heart was breaking for him because of what he was going through. I can’t imagine doing what he had to do, even during the times he was awake, because of something that he can’t control. Bel’s character was one that I wanted to hate, and at times I did, but in the end I ended up realizing how great of a guy he was throughout the story. Granted, he had his bad qualities, but who doesn’t.

This story line is one that I haven’t actually read about before, but I can say that I think Ms. Rock and Ms. Henry have done an amazing job writing this book. There was tons of information that they added that helped to make the story better, and just the overall flow of the story was extremely well done.

I do hope that at some point in the future we will get a little tease as to how Daniel and Bel are doing with their new lives. I think that it would be great to see what they end up doing.