So you wake up one morning in your bed but it’s not your bed and it’s not your house… what do you do? That’s right, ring the police… but your phone won’t ring out…. what a living nightmare!!!

Lily is a good person, who would take her and her young daughter in the middle of the night and hold them hostage in a replica house. Everything even down to the books on her bookshelves is identical… the only difference is there is no way out. But someone is watching them, taunting her. But why??! Is this her spiteful ex playing games? How far would this twisted individual go in this torment?

The mind games the captor plays are evil. Lily knows he can get to them at any time, he can ring her but she can’t ring him. He can deliver what they need, he can come and go whilst they’re asleep. That would seriously freak me out. This level of control is scary especially if you don’t know the why!!!

This is one seriously fast paced read. As I devoured two thirds of the book in an evening, I lost all track of the time of the story. How long had Lily and Maisie been kept captive? I really enjoyed Parker’s previous novel The Dinner Party but While You Slept grabbed me by the jugular and held me captive with Lily. If you like your tense psychological thrillers, I highly recommend you give While You Slept a read.

There is a man in Lily's garden. He's wearing a mask ... a picture of her 5-year-old daughter. Lily does the right thing and calls the police, but the intruder is gone by the time they get there.

The next morning mother and daughter wake up as usual .... only there's nothing usual now. They are in a room .. completely decorated to look like their home...but it isn't. The man from the garden has somehow taken them from their home and installed them in a replica. Lily doesn't know where they are ... how long will they be there ... is anyone looking for them?

There is a certain creepiness factor .... knowing that someone is always watching ... bringing you food, but you wonder if it's drugged .... The panic they feel is palpable. Why would someone do this to them ... she has no enemies and her daughter is still a young child.

It's a complex plot amid what seems like many interconnected parts. A backstory would have helped tremendously. The characters lack complete development. There are many twists and turns, some of them make no sense at all with some glue to hold them together. The ending seemed abrupt ... and again, made no sense.

As a thriller, this one just didn't do it for me.

Many thanks to the author / Harper Collins UK / One More Chapter / Netgalley for the digital copy of WHILE YOU SLEPT. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

Not having read anything by this author before I wasn’t sure what to expect. A chilling psychological thriller with a very interesting concept. Twists and turns aplenty which kept me guessing throughout. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I was really intrigued by this book mostly because it reminded me of the part of the TV show Pretty Little Liars where the main characters were locked in a bunker that was essentially a replica of each of their bedrooms. I thought those scenes were really unique and I thought a book with the same concept would be great.
Lily and her 5 year old daughter Maisie are drugged and wake up in a perfect replica of their own home, complete with copies of all their belongings. The doors are locked and a mysterious man tells Lily over the phone that they won’t be harmed if they cooperate, but they must stay in the house and not try to escape or alert others to their presence.
I really wanted to enjoy this book, and I will admit it was compulsively readable; you’re given no clue as to who might have done this to Lily and her daughter, and most of my motivation for finishing the book was to figure out who kidnapped them and why.
However, much of the book was dialogue between Lily and Maisie with very few dialogue tags, so it was difficult to tell who was speaking. That was also made more difficult by the fact that Maisie was unrealistically well spoken for a five year old. Based on my (admittedly limited) experience with five year olds, I don’t think that the average kindergartener would be able to speak as well as Maisie did.
Other than that, there was very little action in the book until the end, and while I liked the reveal of why Lily and Maisie were kidnapped, there were absolutely no clues throughout the book, so I wasn’t even able to form ideas about who it might have been.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

For Lily and her five year old daughter, Maisie it was just like any other evening. They went to bed only to wake up in a nightmare. The house is identical to their own and nothing is out of place, but they can't leave. The house is a replica. Their stalker has taken them while they slept. Lily is still getting over her divorce and Maisie misses her dad.

There's a lot of mystery surrounding this action packed read. The pace is steady. It did get a bit repetitive around the half way mark. There's an element of creepiness about this story. Maisie came across as a lot older than just five years old. I did feel the ending was a bit rushed and that there were gaps left in the story that needed filling. There's plenty of twists in this page turning read.

I would like to thank NetGalley, HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter and the author R.J. Parker for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley and One More Chapter for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

What would you do if you woke up in your home... But it wasn't your home? In "While You Slept" by R. J. Parker, Lily Russell is panicked when she sees a man in her backyard wearing a mask with her daughter's face on it. She calls the cops, but the next morning she and her daughter, Maisie, wake up in an exact replica of their home, but with one change: there's no way out. What will Lily have to do to keep her daughter alive?

Ugh, there is nothing more terrifying than a thriller that's main premise is protecting a child from harm. These are the kind of themes that keep me up at night. "While You Slept" definitely had a Criminal Minds kind of vibe that made it hard to put down, but it flew by a little too quickly.

Parker's characters have just enough detail that I quickly grew attached to them. Lily being protective of her child. Maisie being torn up about her parents divorce, making her quiet, but also clingy to her mom. Ewin becomes likable in the end, even. 

One critique I have is that the ending seemed to come out of nowhere. I didn't get how the connection to the kidnapper would come and while the explanation made sense I would have liked some kind of hinting of what the connection would be. If I would have had more of a backstory on Lily, then the kidnapper clue could have been added and it would have increased the length of the book, making it a little more fulfilling.

I gave this book three stars because it was a little too short and the ending seemed too random without any hinting. I enjoyed this book and it was great for a quick read, but I tend to like a little more length and suspense to my thrillers.

Though I like a story to start with a bang and keep me reading, the attempt to do that with this book just didn’t work for me.

Yes, it started out with a bang. But there was a problem. I didn’t know the characters. And I didn’t feel any empathy toward what was happening. Plus, the attempt to cause tension and excitement needed to take a step back. I needed a story and some background to cause me to care.

As I said, the story jumped right into tension and excitement, but I felt there were problems.

A) What was happening felt vague and confusing.
B) How long can you attempt to keep the tension high? It felt like it was written to be a thriller, but without cluing the audience on enough.
C) You really could read it without suspending all disbelief.

I found myself skimming the pages and gleening the highlights rather than savoring the excitement and emotions that should have accompanied it.

Unfortunately, when the rabbit sprung out of the hat during the last fit few pages, I literally had to shake my head. No warning. No hints. No way to have guessed or anticipated the conclusion. And . . . the last sentence, well, it really confirmed that this book just wasn’t for me.

You will probably enjoy this book if you’re able to suspend disbelief and can engage in a story without much connection to characters.

My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the ARC and the ability to review it and share my opinion.

To wake up in your home that isn't really your home? Terrifying! To realize you're trapped there by someone you're sure you've never met? Debilitating.

Life is hard enough with the fears you face when you have children, but when the face of your child appears in your garden as a mask for a full grown man, it becomes utterly unbearable.

That is exactly what happened to Lily and Maisie. Who is behind this heinousness and why? Lily starts trying to figure out who she may have wronged that could be so cruel. How does someone even have the means to recreate an entire home and have no exit?

This story was gripping and thrilling. I had to keep reading to figure out what was going to happen next and who had taken them.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

The story is about a woman called Lily and her young daughter Maisie. Lily is separated from Maisie’s father, Ewan. Lily has new CCTV installed, which includes motion sensors that trigger a notification to her mobile when it’s been activated. Lily is at work one afternoon and her garden motion detector is triggered. On the screen is a man in the garden wearing a mask featuring her daughter, lily rushes and collects Maisie from school, and goes home with the police. The police check the house out, and it’s fine, and her sister pops round to keep her company.

The next morning Lily and Maisie wake up and, after a few minutes realises she isn’t in fact in her own home, but a complete full replica of her home, situated in a derelict area. Lily needs to find out why she is there, and who is behind it.

The characters in the book were great, although Lily’s extended family (mother/father) weren’t focused on too much, which is a shame, as it would have helped impact the story more. The book was fast paced, and had a good storyline, but there was something missing from the story. I just felt it was a bit unbelievable, especially in this day and age. The ending had a slight twist I wasn’t expecting, but I felt the story could have had much more of a punch if the story was tightened on it, and made it more genuine.

Overall I liked it.

Yeah. Lily and her five year old daughter wake up one morning and find themselves imprisoned in a house that's exactly like theirs- down to everything- except it's not. It's not their house at all. How did they get there? Who is doing this and why? And how on earth did that person do it? Lots of questions, all of which will be answered, somewhat, to my mind, unsatisfactorily but that's the way of many thrillers. My quibble with this (once I accepted how implausible it was) was that Maisie, a five year old, conveys as much older. Not a bad thing but she would have been better written as an older kid. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It is a diverting page turner.

This book is a winner. A mother and a daughter being watched by a sinister figure the next day they wake up at home created to look like their home and being watched by the same person. How do they escape? I highly recommend this thriller.

The premise of this one immediately caught my attention - a woman wakes up in a replica of her own home, along with her young daughter, but they can't leave and it's obviously not their real home.... And though it opens up engagingly (and creepily enough), the writing style throughout the whole book feels oddly convoluted. The action is garbled, with very little time spent on character development. Lily asks quite a bit from her five-year-old daughter, too, which adds to the overall unbelievable quality of the book. Time jumps abruptly, too, and the final climax is so jumbled and rushed that leaves the whole book feeling unsatisfying. The final motivation leaves a lot of more practical questions in its wake, only adding to the implausible reasoning behind their capture. None of it seems plausible and so many gaps are left at the end, that I wonder if perhaps the review copy is unfinished... The ending especially only added to my dissatisfaction. I had hoped that it would improve, but at least it was a quick read... I did finish it, but in retrospect, I wish that I had set this one aside earlier.

What the heck? Can you even imagine going to bed and then waking up the next morning to find out that you are in a complete duplicate of your home and being held prisoner? Of course not! Thankfully! But that is what happens here. Lily is trying to keep them safe, figure a way out, and help her daughter Maisie safe all while trying to figure out who has kidnapped them and why. It makes for a solid rollercoaster of a read! I do wish there had been a bit more background that would support the end. That seemed to come out of left field. Also, I kept forgetting Maisie was only 5. She acted way to mature for someone so young, whether in a stressful situation or not. But, these did not keep me from enjoying the story!

::Sigh::
I'm really torn on how I feel about this one...I read the blurb and was super jazzed about reading this book.
Imagine being at work and getting a motion alert on your backyard camera to find that there's a man standing there wearing a mask with your daughter's face on it?!? Fast forward to the next day and you wake up in what you think is your house, but is strictly a clever replica.....CREEPY! Who imprisoned you and your 5 year old daughter?!? And why?!? Was it your ex-husband who has a history of alcohol abuse and anger issues? Or someone else?

I was loving the first 80 pages or so, but things started to become repetitive. I also could not wrap my head around Maisie, who is supposedly only 5, but is supremely intelligent and very in tune to social cues...I'm not a parent, so I can't guess what age would have been better suited, but I feel like it would have been written better as a teenager. The action sequences were a bit rushed and jumbled and the big reveal was a let down for me. I feel with some minor tweaking this could be the next blockbuster movie!

A special thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins UK/One More Chapter, and R.J. Parker for providing me with an ARC>

What would you do if you woke up in your home, but it as not your home? Literally a replica of your home with no doors and no way out. You are a caprice, with your child, but who took you? You have your ideas... I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The concept of this book was very good! I was creeped out just from reading the synopsis - can you imagine waking up in a place that looks EXACTLY like yours and then realizing it's not? Like the WORK someone had to put in to make their prison the EXACT same as their house was mind-blowing. I appreciated the small details like their cat and the same kind of tools in the drawer - it was all the same, but just a little off, similar to coming home and seeing your couch moved two inches to the left.

I also really liked the pace of this book. I was able to read it in one sitting because I felt like I was going to miss something if I put it down. It moved quickly, but not too quickly. Parker did a great job of making long periods of time for the characters pass quickly and didn't try to draw those out with unnecessary details which I appreciated.

I did feel like while the plot had GREAT potential, it fell super short and felt too out there. The ending just left me saying, "what?" in complete confusion. The revealing of the initial kidnapper was a really good twist that I didn't see coming, but from there, it just kind of went haywire and ended up falling incredibly flat. The ending we got needed some sort of lead up that wasn't there, so it seemed to come out of nowhere and make no sense at all.

What would you do if you woke up in your home… but it wasn't your home at all?

When a man wearing a picture mask of her daughter Maisie's face stands tauntingly in her garden, Lily Russell does the smart thing and calls the police. When she and Maisie wake up the following morning in an exact replica of their home, held captive by that same man, the police are no longer an option.

Surrounded by the rooms and things that once provided comfort and now only promote fear, Lily and Maisie must fight to survive. Because when no one knows where you are, you are your only hope.

I was really intrigued by the concept of this book and was excited to read it.
The first 100 pages really packed a punch and was super creepy but after that the book just fell flat.
The ending just seemed to come out of nowhere and felt rushed and it is not really explained who the mystery man was.
So many unanswered questions with this book that left me wanting more.

What would you do if you woke up in your home…But it wasn’t your home at all?

While You Slept got my attention with the tag line. What a terrifying idea to go to sleep in your home, but wake up somewhere else.

In While You Slept, Lily sees a man in her garden with a mask on of her daughters face. The intruder knows he is on the security camera and stares and waves. Obviously frightened Lily calls the police to come check on things, but they find no evidence of an intruder. The following morning Lily and her daughter wake up in an exact replica of their home, but are unable to escape.

Sounds creepy huh? I was initially expecting this to be like the movie The Strangers. If you haven’t seen the one with Liv Tyler. Please go check it out. But instead, this ended up reminding me more of Jodie Foster’s Panic Room.

Anyways enough about movie comparisons, onto my review…the beginning of this story and the end were both very good, but unfortunately I found myself getting lost thinking of other things in the middle. The middle seemed repetitive, the story started seeming too far fetched, and things started to drag for me and my attention was lost.

One thing I really did enjoy is this story really does a great job of grabbing your attention in the beginning, there wasn’t time wasted, things start to happen right away. I also liked the explanation at the ending of what happened, just not enough for me to be happy that I picked this one up.

I never want to tell someone not to read something as I see poor reviews on books I loved and vice versa. So give this one a shot if you loved the movie The Panic Room, and like tense fast paced reads that get right into the action.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you @netgalley and Harper Collins for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

While this book kept me interested and I was as much involved as Lily in finding out the reason for her and her daughter Maisie's kidnapping, I found too many things distracting:

How did the kidnappers have the resources to keep the charade going?
How were the kidnapper(s) available 24/7?
How were they able to replicate things so perfectly? We never do find out how, when, or if they were inside Lily's house.
How do you get a 5-year-old to cooperate like Maisie did?
Where are the clues that might allow us to guess what was happening?

I will admit that it kept the tension high and the first night I read this I was a little afraid to go to sleep! So, points for the creep factor!

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter for an advance reader's copy for review.

This book begins with Lily getting an alert that her security system was picking up someone in the yard. As she looks at the image, she sees a man wearing a mask made in the image of her 5 year old daughters face. When she yells at him through the security system, he stares right at the camera and waves, before slowly walking to the wall and leaving her yard. The police come but there is no sign of her intruder.

Lily and her daughter wake up in the morning and everything seem normal until they start moving around the house. While checking her security app, Lily realizes that there is an intruder insider her home. She also realizes that she is not.

Set up to be a super creepy, heart in your mouth thriller, the next 70% of the book kind of dragged on as Lily and her daughter learn more about what her captor wants and the space they are living in.

The last third of the book is very fast paced as Lily tries to escape with her child and her kidnappers try to stop her.

The resolution would have made more sense if the reader had been given more backstory and the last paragraph was super creepy and would make a great ending to the story.

Great premise, a good bit of creep factor but the slow slog in the middle made it not a great read.
2.5 Stars
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-Arc in exchange for my honest review.