Review: Killer Dreams by Iris Johansen (audio book)

From the back of the audio case: #1 New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen returns with a new suspense thriller guaranteed to keep listeners up all night long – an adrenaline-laced shocker that pits a mother and son against a killer who’s the stuff of nightmares.

Someone is watching. He’s a shadowy figure from out of her darkest fears, and he hasn’t forgotten her. In one shocking moment of violence, he’d shattered Sophie’s world forever. But the nightmare isn’t over. Sophie was supposed to die the first time around, but fate intervened. This time he’ll make sure that not even a miracle will have her.

Matt Royd is a wild card – hard, cool, merciless – and the man chosen to protect Sophie. She will have to trust Royd because she has not choices left. Because the bogeyman haunting her dreams is all too real and he’s on the hunt again. Because the nightmare he’s got planned for Sophie won’t end when she wakes up screaming. It won’t end. Ever.

Read by: Jennifer Van Dyck

My thoughts: Somehow I missed this story when it first came out so when I saw the audio version at the library, I had to get it. Right from the prologue of the story, Iris Johansen hooks you and keeps you captivated til the very end.

The story starts two years in the past. Sophie Dunston works for a pharmaceutical company doing research. She is a sleep therapist, looking for cures for night terrors, is married to a lawyer, and has an 8 year old son, Michael. She is with her dad having watched him fish and are joining her mom and son for lunch when literally all hell breaks loose!

The story then jumps forward to now as Sophie works at a university hospital helping monitor and take care of patients, especially children, with severe night terrors and sleep. She also has a secret agenda: to kill the CEO of her former employer, a man by the name of Sanborne. He took the work she did developing a chemical called REM-4 that was supposed to control and eliminate night terrors and started using it to mind control ex-military and criminals. Sophie befriends Jock Gavin, a young man who was put under control with REM-4, and he trains her in unarmed and armed combat. He also gets Matt Royd to help, another victim of REM-4.

With the help of some familiar friends, such as MacDuff, Jane Maguire and Joe Quinn, Sophie, Jock and Royd go on a roller-coaster of a ride trying to take down Sanborne. This thriller keeps you on your toes and narrator Jennifer Van Dyck manages to give all the characters distinct personalities. She is definitely one of my favorite narrators when it comes to audio books!

(I borrowed this audio book from the library.)