Stay Awake
Stay Awake
By: Megan Goldin
[This was on my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2022]
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you” — Catch 22, Joseph Heller
“What do I have against sleep?”
”You’re afraid of what you do in your sleep.”
“I can’t help but wonder what I’ve forgotten… I’m in danger. I feel it in my bones.”
You guys.
I read this book in two days.
It is quite a bit different than her book The Night Swim.
The formatting, the content, the flow is all different.
Instead of a controversial and heartbreaking mystery with some #MeToo triggers like The Night Swim, Stay Awake is an intense thriller with no political commentary.
And it’s so good!
Some have commented on the plausibility of the plot, but most books don’t seek to say ‘This is what happens when…’ they pose the question ‘What if?’
Stay Awake’s what if is this: What if someone experienced a traumatic event that created insomnia and paranoia and whenever she went to sleep she wakes up and forgets everything that happened since the traumatic event? And what if she’s either dangerous or in danger?
Based entirely on the preview of the CBS show Blindspot (because I never actually watched it) this book is like that.
Liv wakes up on a park bench and doesn’t know where she is going or why she is there. And she has written notes all over her hands that say things like:
STAY AWAKE
DON’T SLEEP
TRUST NO ONE
DON’T TALK TO THE POLICE, EVER!
Oh, and there’s a bloody knife in her pocket.
The last thing she remembers was a summer day two years ago when she answers a phone call from her office desk. It’s now two years later, she can’t find her best friend or her boyfriend, and someone else is living in her apartment.
Soon she becomes the suspect in a murder.
How can she clear her name if she can’t remember anything recent and she can’t trust anyone?
“I don’t know how I became an interloper in my own life.”
This book is fast-paced and intense. I loved it! It’s just the kind of thriller I was looking for.
We have alternating chapters.
The chapters in the present all take place in one day- the day the murdered man was discovered. Liv is scrambling to unravel what is going on and Detective Darcy Halliday and her partner are investigating the murder and tracking Liv down.
The chapters in the past are the days leading up to Liv’s traumatic experience and what caused all of this to begin with.
I did have part of it figured out, but not all of it.
If you like thrillers, I would definitely recommend this one! It’s fairly clean, not much language (only 3 f-words, 4 s-words) or gruesome details, and it reads fast.
My only qualm with the book is that after I finished it and sat with it awhile, I realized they didn’t really explain the entire ‘why’ behind the murders. Maybe I was turning pages so fast that I missed it, but I wish they would have fleshed out the motive a little bit more.
But my only thoughts while reading the book were—what is going on?! I need to keep reading!
So yeah. It comes out in August, and you should read it.
A few other random thoughts and surprises:
The detectives kept calling the murdered guy ‘the stiff’ and I thought that was weird. I’ve watched/read a lot of cop-type books/shows and I don’t think I’ve ever heard that term.
The killer wrote the words ‘Wake Up!’ on the window in blood, but backwards so that it could be read from outside and they made this big deal about it being a hard thing to do or they were trying to read it from inside and said it was nonsense. But let’s be real… It’s really not that hard to read or write Wake Up! backwards. I have no problem with her dissociative amnesia fugue, but let’s be realistic about the words!
They talked about not being able to extract DNA from hairs left at the scene because they were rootless. I hadn’t realized the hair had to have roots. So I googled it, and it TURNS OUT we’ve had a breakthrough in technology and some guy actually figured out a way to get DNA from a rootless hair but it’s expensive so probably won’t happen much. But cool news.
I LOVED how Liv’s character hated performance art! I was an art major and when we started learning modern art history and performance art it was the worst. She says, “I’ve never been to a performance art event that didn’t make me want to barf. Maybe I’m cynical, or maybe I’ve seen too much in my life, but I find these sorts of things fatuous and self-indulgent.” And I would like to give her a high five!
This was also a fun fact Goldin included: Agatha Christie went missing in 1926 and had her own ‘memory loss’ event! People thought she disappeared for several days and couldn’t find her. Turns out she had checked into a spa under the name of her husband’s mistress and going about life. Someone at the spa recognized her. She didn’t remember any of it! Google it, it’s pretty interesting considering this book!
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This book releases August 9, 2022. You can use my affiliate link below to pre-order.
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