Absolutely loved this fast past mystery thriller. Kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Following dual timeline with dual pov. Extremely fun read!!

A fun, twisty, suspense-thriller that will keep you guessing.

Liv survived a murder attempt two years ago and is trying to track down the would-be killer, only she can't loses her memory every time she falls asleep. And now she's the only suspect in the murder of a man she's never met.

A race to the end to see if the mystery can be solved before Liv gets in danger herself.

Well done. And kudos for no "diversity bingo".

Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi and has a bloody knife in her pocket and her arms are full of writing telling her to stay awake. She is also suffering from a two year gap in her memory. Who can she trust? The police are after Liv. She gets phone calls from someone that threatens and frightens her. As she gathers information the details of her story are revealed.

This is a super fast paced read. I could not put this book down. As pieces of Liv's memory were revealed to her I just wanted to know how it fit into everything else and whether it was relevant or not to the overall story arc. I really enjoy Megan Goldin's writing style and look forward to reading future books by this author.

Megan Goldin's books are always auto-reads for me - I love the way she weaves just enough detail through each chapter to keep you guessing but also make you think you know what happened. Stay Awake reminded me of a book I read a few years ago where the protagonist kept forgetting what happened every morning when she woke, and I've heard others say it's kind of like the movie Momento. We follow Liv Reese as she tries to put together the pieces of the previous night when she wakes up in a taxi, unable to recall how she got there. Chapters flash between two years prior and "today", inching closer to the pivotal event (I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm being vague). I listened to the audiobook and thought both narrators were fantastic. It was easy to keep track of the characters and timelines based on the narrator and inflection, adding to the enjoyment of the story. Great twisty story!

Every time that I pick up a Megan Golden book, I am always intrigued with what I am going to get out of it. It always feels like some sort of domestic thriller, which typically isn’t my thing, but I love the way she writes them. I come back time and time again. This one was no exception. I love the mysterious start and unreliable narrator.

Liv Reese is a woman hunted, but she doesn't know that. In fact, she isn't sure of much at all; how did she get here, why there is there writing all over her hands and where the heck is her best friend and boyfriend?

This book kept me on edge the whole way through. Nothing says unreliable narrator like a character who has no memory of the last 2 years and can't remember a thing from one sleep to the next. I found myself back tracking and second guessing myself multiple times throughout this book. I did figure out the twist about 60% of the way through but then I questioned myself again. I had nightmares from the anxiety this book caused me-bravo to the author on her insane ability to write about paranoia, memory loss and provide stalker vibes so detailed that I literally had goosebumps on my skin. Definitely do not recommend to young women, alone, in the dark-especially not if you have anxiety, haha. No, no. But you must read this-so read it during the daylight hours!
I'm pretty sure I've read everything Megan Goldin has put out so far and I'm positive that will continue to be a trend I keep on point with!

4.5 stars! Stay Awake was such a fun book. I enjoyed the alternating chapters between the detective, Darcy Halliday and Liv Reese who keeps waking up with no memory of what happened and thinking it’s two years prior. I really enjoyed the development of the character Detective Halliday; I hope she is in future books. She was well crafted and multidimensional and there just so many unanswered questions related to her past. Please give us a series!!!!

Phenomenal! I can’t believe this book isn’t getting more hype. This is the type of thriller that I recommend going into without reading the synopsis. There’s a before and after timeline and an unreliable narrative who seems to have amnesia. This is such a wild ride, I did guess the final plot twist so this wasn’t 5 stars for me, but I’m a huge Megan Goldin fan. I’ve read all her books now and she’s fantastic. Interested to see what she writes next.

In this intriguing novel, the protagonist cannot go to sleep or she forgets the past. I cannot imaging trying to cope with not knowing who you are or what went on. Of course, she doesn't realize what she doesn't know and the author puts you into her day-to-day struggle. It was a difficult story to put down and for readers with better eyesight than mine, it lends to a continuous and captivating read.

I loved this creepy non stop suspenseful thriller. The main character had a rare form of insomnia where when she fell asleep she would forget everything for the past two years of her life.

Short synopsis: Every time Liv falls asleep, she wakes up with no recent memories. She wakes up with a bloody knife in her pocket and messages scrawled on her hands and arms urging her to Stay Awake.

My thoughts: After reading The Night Swim earlier this year I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Megan Goldin’s newest thriller. Stay awake exceeded every expectation I’d had!

A fast paced, page turning, atmospheric thriller that will keep you guessing until the last pages.

Loved the perspective from the detectives and the unreliable narrator was done so well in Liv.

I can’t wait to read more from Megan!

Read if you love:
- Fast paced thrillers
- Multiple perspectives
- Amnesia troupe
- Reverse order timeline

Thank you so much St Martins for a copy of this book!

Stay Awake by Megan Goldin is a psychological thriller following Liv Reese as she wakes up in a cab with no clue where she is or what has happened to her. From there, we find out that every time she doses off, she loses her memory, like a scary 50 First Dates. The novel also follows Detective Haliday as she tries to find a cold-blooded killer, one who stabbed their victim and even wrote "Wake Up" on the window in blood.

While this thriller is fast-paced with a lot of twists and turns, it ultimately has too many scenes reiterating that our narrator has memory problems. It can be a little repetitive, and my overall criticism of the genre itself is that our heroines have SO MUCH TRAUMA! I can't list all of her issues without spoiling, but it does take me out of the story when an innocent person has such a sad backstory.

If you have never read Megan Goldin, start with The Night Swim, as this is a far more compelling story with multiple narrators that actually contains social commentary.

Stay Awake was the first book I read since August and I'm so glad it pulled me tight in and kept me wanting more. At times it was a bit repetitive but I understand why that was needed since Liv suffers from amnesia. It was a medium paced suspense book that kept my attention and made me want to read one more chapter to find out what happens next. Highly recommend!

The premise of this story was very intriguing. A woman wakes up with a bloody knife in her pocket and words scribbled all up and down her hands and arms, telling her to "stay awake." What does it mean? And why can't she remember the past two years of her life?

I admit, this story did not keep me quite as captivated as The Night Swim. In fact, it felt to me like two different people wrote these stories. Stay Awake jumped around a lot from present day to two years ago to two days ago, and I found myself having to backtrack a lot to keep myself straight on where we were in the timeline.

Liv really is dealing with quite a lot, losing her memory every time she falls asleep. And now she has no clue what she's been doing for the past two years of her life. And someone appears to be after her. This was certainly a twisty tale that kept me guessing all the way through. I had one suspect in mind, but I was completely wrong, so kudos to Ms. Goldin for throwing me off the track.

My favorite chapters were the ones with Detectives Halliday and Lavelle. I tended to get a little aggravated with the decisions that Liv was making, but I've never been in her situation so I can't say what I would have done differently. All in all, I enjoyed this book, but it didn't hit all the marks for me the way The Night Swim did.

Suspenseful and engaging, Stay Awake kept me pulled in to the story from the first chapter. Unreliable narrator (amnesia), lots of potential suspects, and twists I didn’t see coming. Highly recommend this well-paced thriller!

Stay awake is written in the form of letters. This was such a unique writing style, I loved it. Liv wakes up in a tazi with no idea where she is headed, or how she even got in this taxi. When she arrives at the apartment that she shares with her friend Amy, she is shocked to find who strangers are living there. We follow Liv who has a rare type of amnesia.

Her life is exhausting because every time she wakes up she needs to piece together her life. She wakes up one morning with the words "stay awake" written on her palm. Later that day she sees a new report of a murder investigation. And at the scene of the write, written in blood is the same message... "stay awake".

This was such a page turner!!

I was so hyped up to read this book I ended up being kind of scared to read it, you guys. Have you ever been so excited for something you feel like you may have talked yourself into it disappointing you? That's what I kind of did with "Stay Awake": For months on end I was so excited to read this book that when it came time to read it (I read my ARCS rather chronologically and I have a system, folks)... I put it off. Then everyone in my house got COVID, so I fell behind in my ARC reading. And then I moved on, telling myself I would make time for "Stay Awake" when I had time for it.

And now I feel awfully dumb, because this book was flipping fantastic! Sure, it does remind me of the fabulous 2000 Christopher Nolan film "Memento" in a lot of ways, but I simply couldn't bring myself to care too much, because from the very first page, I was rolling with this story and how Goldin used the bookend storytelling method in such a unique and effective manner. It's not easy to bookend a story that starts in media res specifically like this one does and echo that beginning with an ending that's much the same but with the plot resolved and the character completely changed. Also, the themes of PTSD, enduring grief, and needing a purpose in life to keep moving on after a great loss echoed in both our protagonist, Liv Reese, and in one of the NYPD detectives in charge of the chase, Detective Halliday. A tenuous psychological insight between Halliday (who used to be in the military and lost fellow troops and friends in Afghanistan and at home) form a solid sympathetic backbone between the unreliable narration of Liv (who, of course, knows not to trust her own brain so we know better too) and the too-pragmatic and masculine brain of Halliday's partner, Detective Lavelle. Detective Lavelle's not a bad cop by any means, but he's a city copy who just doesn't know to look any deeper than the evidence right in front of him, while Halliday can see there are nuances to this case that she can't dismiss.

Memory loss is a horrid, traumatizing thing. I suffer from memory blackouts myself. That's part of what drew me to this book. I don't suffer the same kind of blackouts, but I've lost hours, days, weeks, and once I missed months. The time I missed months I had a nervous breakdown. You panic, not knowing or understanding why, and it simply makes you want to beg to be locked away because you can't be sure of what you did in that missing chunk of time. I actually did beg to be committed. I didn't trust myself. It also makes you paranoid, because you realize that you're vulnerable: people could say things to you or talk you into things or take things from you and you may never remember. So I had a very visceral reaction to Liv's memory blackouts, because I remember that feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. I remember how that feels, to go into a place and have people remember you being there and you not remember. It didn't trigger me, but boy did it make me empathize with Liv and her predicament. If it weren't for [spoiler reasons], I'd have been mentally begging her to just go to the police and tell them to take me to the mental hospital, because it was obvious Liv was just too vulnerable to be alone.
As the plot unfolded in this book, page by page and scene by scene, I was also reminded of "Wrong Place, Wrong Time" by Gillian McAllister, even though that title came out later in the year than "Stay Awake". But both books have that time device plot of the past coming up to meet a predetermined point near the end of the book, and it works so well because it allows just a drip of information of what Liv went through in a pivotal time frame to the entire plot, allowing all the collected information from the rest of the book to coalesce into a clear picture at the exact right time for the rest of the book to press forward into one exhilarating conclusion.

I absolutely loved this book and wish I had read it sooner this year. What an excellent thrill ride!

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for granting me access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review, and another thanks is due to St. Martin’s Press for sending me a complimentary finished hardcover copy of the book. Thanks, you guys!

Please note this review is being written as part of a series of backdated ARC reviews that were due earlier in the year but, for one reason or another, I wasn’t able to get to them by the publication date.

File Under: Psychological Thriller/Suspense Thriller/Crime Thriller/Five Star Reads/Thriller

Megan Goldin is a rockstar on the mystery/thriller front! I am LOVING her! She had me questioning every character and their innocence which is what you want to do! I was captivated and the ending was so well done! Good job and can’t wait to read her again!!

This was a quick read for me considering I was super intrigued and wanted to know who commuted the crime! The psychological aspect incorporated into the story was super interesting to me since I’ve heard it happen to people who want to suppress trauma. I enjoyed having to piece together all the clues and figure out what truly happened to Liv!

4.5 stars

Thank you to the publisher for a free E-ARC in exchange for an honest review. Wow this book surprised me in all the best ways, i absolutely loved this book. There was twist and turns as well as the premise was something that i really haven’t read before at all. Additionally there was 3 main povs that we kept flipping between and fast paced chapters. Honestly any fans of thrillers need to read this book was absolutely amazing!