Stay Awake: A Novel

Liv is living the life in NYC. She writes a food column for an incredibly popular magazine. She shares an apartment with her best friend and her cat and has an Italian boyfriend that she adores.

One night, she wakes up in the back of a cab with writing all over her hands with no recollection of how she got there. The last thing she remembers is answering her phone at work earlier in the day. Her night goes down hill from there. She gets back to her apartment and there’s a strange couple there that won’t let her in. Then the creepy, anonymous phone calls start…

This novel definitely takes you on a ride and has some suspense! I would for sure classify this as a thriller. I really enjoyed the back and forth timeline, it helped build the story and made you understand Liv’s condition more.

I did however find it to be very predictable and that’s one thing I really don’t like in my thrillers. I want to be surprised around every corner. The narrator was pretty good, I really didn’t like how her voice had a synth type sound if you speed the narration up.

Thank you @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for this ALC of Stay Awake by Megan Goldin in exchange for an honest review.

50 first dates, but make it a thriller

Right away, this book drew me in and kept me on edge, trying to figure out what was happening and what happened to Liv in her past.

This book…wow. I am torn between never going to sleep again and never waking up. Why do I say that you ask? Well how would you feel if every time you woke up and found out that the life you knew was no longer yours…or it is yours just not like you remember it. That’s what happens to the main character Liv. She falls asleep and wakes up with pieces of her life missing but no clues except things she written on her hands. She has nothing. From the get go I felt so bad for her that I was hoping the outcome wouldn’t be worse than how it started. I mean who would want to start over day after day? So I liked the fact the author made a sympathetic MC, however this is a thriller after all…so what was all the missing pieces? One thing I am not sure of is the situation that characters were found in that kicked this whole thing off. I can’t say who or what for spoiler purposes, but idk it felt a bit too set up to me. I understand how things were pieced together to make the outcome believable, but there was no evidence to that event aside from the “main event”. Maybe I am naive I don’t know. I enjoyed the fast pace and relatively short chapters. It did keep me hooked and wanting to read on. Detective Halliday was my favorite character after Liv. I know she is only fictional, but the way she was written as someone who doesn’t take everything at surface value was refreshing. I would have been very disappointed if she ended up agreeing with everyone else on their assumptions. I would recommend this to anyone of an adult age who enjoys thrillers and a bit of mystery. It might make you sad a bit though, but it is good none the less. Go read it!