What do you think?
Rate this book
Twilight: Where Darkness Begins #1
Deadly Sleep
Jaynie visits her friend Evelyn in Scotland to take a break from her problems at home, including a painful break-up with her boyfriend. Just as she begins to relax, she starts hearing eerie voices in the night, and when she investigates, she sees a ghastly figure rising from the slime of the lake.
167 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 1, 1982
4 people are currently reading
244 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 15, 2014
I have read this book and many others from this series (Twilight: Where Darkness Begins) several times when I was in Junior High School. My friends and I were always passing them between us. This one, Deadly Sleep, was my favorite and I never forgot it. I recently purchased a copy of it and just reread it. What a treat! Now I know why I love reading horrors, Macbeth, historical novels and am interested in dreams. It all stemmed from this book. Now my kids can read it, too!
August 19, 2019
When I was younger, my sister had a couple of these Twilight: Where Darkness Begins... books. I wasn't the target age for them, but I liked to read, and I loved horror stories, so I eventually read them. I remember liking them quite a bit (note: I was probably nine or ten at the time), and Paperbacks from Hell reminded me of the series. I thought about tracking down those two books to re-read them, but of course I had to track down every single one of them. Thus was born my latest reading project.
Deadly Sleep is a decent enough book. The style is clearly for a younger audience (YA and juvenile books from the early '80s lacked the confidence in their readers that Rowling and Collins have brought to the market), but this ghost story draws on Shakespeare and Scottish history to create an atmospheric tale of revenge over a thousand years. Parts of it feel dated, and the story reads like it was marketed toward teenage girls, but it's compelling enough to have kept me reading, and the characters were sturdy enough for me to care what happened to them.
To be clear, I'm not saying this is a candidate for Book of the Year, and I wouldn't recommend it outside of folks who have become caught up in the Paperbacks from Hell books, but it was a better book than I was expecting. At first I thought I may have lowered my expectations, but I was pretty excited to get started on the series, since I've had them for several months now. I think my expectations were average, and the book met those expectations well enough.
Deadly Sleep is a decent enough book. The style is clearly for a younger audience (YA and juvenile books from the early '80s lacked the confidence in their readers that Rowling and Collins have brought to the market), but this ghost story draws on Shakespeare and Scottish history to create an atmospheric tale of revenge over a thousand years. Parts of it feel dated, and the story reads like it was marketed toward teenage girls, but it's compelling enough to have kept me reading, and the characters were sturdy enough for me to care what happened to them.
To be clear, I'm not saying this is a candidate for Book of the Year, and I wouldn't recommend it outside of folks who have become caught up in the Paperbacks from Hell books, but it was a better book than I was expecting. At first I thought I may have lowered my expectations, but I was pretty excited to get started on the series, since I've had them for several months now. I think my expectations were average, and the book met those expectations well enough.
September 30, 2013
"Deadly Sleep" is the first book in Dell Publishing's young adult horror series "Twilight: Where Darkness Begins". They chose an excellent book to start the series off with. It takes place in Scotland, and there's some history, a lot of legend, and some Shakespeare involved.
Before the book begins, Evelyn Macdonald travels to America as an exchange student and stays with Jaynie's family. The two become friends and the next summer Jaynie travels to Scotland to spend the summer with Evelyn's family. The book begins on Jaynie's first day there, on the way home from the airport. Her first night she has a weird dream that keeps coming back to her. It seems to be connected to things she knows nothing about, the history of the castle Evelyn takes her to the next day, legends surrounding the place, and even to Shakespeare's "Macbeth", which Jaynie has never read.
I quite like how things build up, slowly, letting you wonder what exactly is going on, and what will eventually happen. I've never read "Macbeth" so I'm like Jaynie in this, finding it all out new. I'm wondering if my experience would have been different had I read Shakespeare's play before this book.
The book has me thinking about Scotland and wanting to look up its history. Any book that has me wanting to study its subject matter further once I've finished it gets extra points in my consideration.
It's set in Scotland and has you hearing the accent as you're reading the book, it brings Shakespeare to life for me and has me wanting to study more of Scottish history, it's a horror book but without excessive gore, all in all, I'd really recommend this one. Too bad Dale Cowan didn't write any more of the books in this series.
Before the book begins, Evelyn Macdonald travels to America as an exchange student and stays with Jaynie's family. The two become friends and the next summer Jaynie travels to Scotland to spend the summer with Evelyn's family. The book begins on Jaynie's first day there, on the way home from the airport. Her first night she has a weird dream that keeps coming back to her. It seems to be connected to things she knows nothing about, the history of the castle Evelyn takes her to the next day, legends surrounding the place, and even to Shakespeare's "Macbeth", which Jaynie has never read.
I quite like how things build up, slowly, letting you wonder what exactly is going on, and what will eventually happen. I've never read "Macbeth" so I'm like Jaynie in this, finding it all out new. I'm wondering if my experience would have been different had I read Shakespeare's play before this book.
The book has me thinking about Scotland and wanting to look up its history. Any book that has me wanting to study its subject matter further once I've finished it gets extra points in my consideration.
It's set in Scotland and has you hearing the accent as you're reading the book, it brings Shakespeare to life for me and has me wanting to study more of Scottish history, it's a horror book but without excessive gore, all in all, I'd really recommend this one. Too bad Dale Cowan didn't write any more of the books in this series.
March 12, 2014
I am working my way through rereading these books from my childhood. This was one of my favorites back then.
March 18, 2021
Girl goes on vacay with her friend’s family in Ireland and somehow ends up in the middle of a Shakespearean familial curse. Someone dies and she can’t decide if she should go out with the dead girl’s brother right away because she’s still hung up on her ex. Also she makes out with a rock. There’s a lot going on here. There are some truly spooky, atmospheric descriptions I really enjoyed reading but a bit too much exposition. Lol at everyone over explaining what they suspect is going on with Jaynie and the now very obvious Macbeth link at the end. Overall a fun read though. Hope I can find more of this series!
December 22, 2021
This was really enjoyable. I like how it blended in Shakespeare's Macbeth to give the story a creepy, unsettling edge. The characters were quite likeable and I was hoping that the story would end a certain way. Without giving away any spoilers, it did.
I recommend this series (Twilight - Where Darkness Begins) to those who want a light horror read without anything over-the-top within. 4 stars out of 5.
I recommend this series (Twilight - Where Darkness Begins) to those who want a light horror read without anything over-the-top within. 4 stars out of 5.
July 5, 2024
Found this in a box of books from my junior high years
January 5, 2013
I've been on a mission to find and read these books for awhile, though I'd put off buying them online in hopes I could find them at a bookstore. I'd only read one of the series, but I like horror and I like reading stuff from my childhood, so I finally broke down and bought this one from Amazon.
The story is about a girl who visits her best friend in Scotland and starts seeing the ghost of a woman who legend says will be back for revenge. The main character starts dreaming that the figures in the photos on her bedroom wall are moving and that a voice is speaking to her from the nearby loch. The story unravels like a ghost story/mystery that brings in Scottish legend and snippets from Shakespeare's Macbeth.
The ghost/revenge aspect is cliched, and the predictability of the plot made the book boring. There was alot of potential with the Shakespeare angle, but I found myself having a hard time engaging with the story.
Being that this is a plot driven story, the characters don't give much to hang on to either. It's hard to believe that the main character is still shattered over her break-up, or to find any sense of realism in the budding romance between her and the male lead.
I'm not sure if anything technically "saved" this book for me, but I gave it two stars rather than one because there were a couple scenes I found to be creepy and I was able to picture the story in a modern setting rather than an early 80s setting (which is when the book was published).
This is the first book of a series, and so I like to be a little lenient. Granted, the series isn't a serial type of story; it's just a bunch of stand alone horror stories. But I'd like to think that the other stories will have more going for them.
I'm not going to order anymore of the series, but I will make it a bookstore scavenger hunt to find other ones to read, if nothing for the sheer fun of "finding" something and for the nostalgia aspect.
The story is about a girl who visits her best friend in Scotland and starts seeing the ghost of a woman who legend says will be back for revenge. The main character starts dreaming that the figures in the photos on her bedroom wall are moving and that a voice is speaking to her from the nearby loch. The story unravels like a ghost story/mystery that brings in Scottish legend and snippets from Shakespeare's Macbeth.
The ghost/revenge aspect is cliched, and the predictability of the plot made the book boring. There was alot of potential with the Shakespeare angle, but I found myself having a hard time engaging with the story.
Being that this is a plot driven story, the characters don't give much to hang on to either. It's hard to believe that the main character is still shattered over her break-up, or to find any sense of realism in the budding romance between her and the male lead.
I'm not sure if anything technically "saved" this book for me, but I gave it two stars rather than one because there were a couple scenes I found to be creepy and I was able to picture the story in a modern setting rather than an early 80s setting (which is when the book was published).
This is the first book of a series, and so I like to be a little lenient. Granted, the series isn't a serial type of story; it's just a bunch of stand alone horror stories. But I'd like to think that the other stories will have more going for them.
I'm not going to order anymore of the series, but I will make it a bookstore scavenger hunt to find other ones to read, if nothing for the sheer fun of "finding" something and for the nostalgia aspect.
August 18, 2019
I had not read this one, and it is one that I wish I had never read. It's quite boring and hard to get into to. I didn't care about the mystery at all, which is hard to believe, considering that I am a big fan of royal historical fiction, and this book had elements of that.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews