I enjoyed Megan Goldin’s The Night Swim so her publicist sent me a Net Galley link for her latest book, Stay Awake. Friends, believe me when I say:

This is the suspense novel of Summer ’22.

I loved, loved, loved this twisty read and I was trying all along to figure it all out. I love a book that keeps me up at night and that I can’t wait to escape into, and this was it!

That’s it from me – no spoilers! You can thank me later…

This thriller kept me interested the entire way through! Excellent character development— lots of twists and turns and chilling details. You will want to “stay awake” at night in order to finish it!

STAY AWAKE review

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5

💤I read The Night Swim at the very beginning of this year and loved it! I was so excited to read Megan Goldin’s latest thriller that published last week! While I enjoyed the overall story, this one wasn’t as big of a hit for me.

💤Here’s a summary of the plot:👇
Liv wakes up in the back of taxi with no memory of how she got there. When she arrives at her apartment, she finds strangers are living there; strangers who claim Liv hasn’t lived there in over 2 years. She has no idea what’s going on, no cellphone to contact any of her friends, and has a bloody knife in her bag. The only clue are the words “STAY AWAKE” written in pen on her hands. The news channels across the city are reporting on a gruesome murder that took place, and Liv can’t shake the feeling that she was at the murder scene. If only she could remember what happened…

💤The concept of this one was very intriguing to me! The idea that all of your current memories are reset every time you fall asleep is terrifying. However, I didn’t love the way the story was executed. I know that the constant repetition was there because Liv can’t remember anything and so she’s hearing the same details about her life every time she wakes up. But it started to get frustrating reading the same information over and over throughout the book. I still enjoyed this story overall, but thought it dragged at times. I have two more of this author’s backlist books to read and I definitely plan on reading them soon!!

Wow! This book was seriously intense and kept my heart racing the entire time I was reading it. Megan Goldin’s STAY AWAKE was a hair-raising ride. It was a lot of fun trying to figure out what happened to Liv Reese. The pages will turn faster the further you delve into Liv’s story.
Liv Reese wakes up in a cab, disoriented with notes, including “stay awake” on her hands. She heads home, only to find nothing is the same: it’s not her apartment. She can’t find her roommate or her boyfriend. What happened in the past two years? Every time she goes to sleep she forgets and it seems there are things she shouldn’t be forgetting because now there is murder involved and she’s either the prime suspect or knows too much. Can she figure it out before she forgets again? Who can she trust?
Don’t miss this wild ride!
Thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read an advanced copy. All opinions are my own and freely given.
#StayAwake #MeganGoldin #StMartinsPress

A very quick mystery/thriller read! I always love when I can't predict the ending!

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an arc for an honest review!

In 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐞, Liv runs around trying to remember what happened the last two years while also attempting to figure out why the writing on her arms reminds her to “Stay Awake”. A bloody knife found in her pocket further throws her into panic. And yes, a quick google search of herself or a trip to the police station would have likely answered several questions she had, but where is the fun in that?

Between the red herrings and past flashbacks, 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐞 was well-paced and kept me guessing as any great mystery should. The potential was there and the bar were definitely set high after 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐒𝐰𝐢𝐦!

Yet, its ending left me with plenty of questions, mixed feelings, and wanting more. Similar to the main character, I had a sense that I was missing an important piece of the story that may, or may not, had materialized when reading. A special shoutout to my friends who discussed this read, in attempts to shake this feeling.

𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘴𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧, “𝘈𝘮 𝘐 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨?”

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an advance copy.

This book wasn't terrible and I thought, for a thriller, it was written well and even had an interesting twist. The problems I had with this that prevented it from being an outta-the-park read for me were the following:

(1) The amount of red herrings and the amount of red herrings that were never resolved! I won't go into ANY details but once you finish you will completely understand. I really disliked how storylines were thrown in to be a plot device and then nothing came of it and wasn't even explained at the end.

(2) The way emotional aspects of this book were glossed over. At times the pacing felt rushed and there was a lack of emotional pull from the story. Plotting was spent on other elements that overall didn't matter at all to the story, yet the main story line didn't have a lot of attention or focus.

Overall, it was just sort of all over the place. I thought it was a nicely crafted thriller, just sort of a jumble of storylines that unfortunately didn't work super well. I didn't hate it but wasn't a favorite.

Stay Awake is a good thriller, with a premise that kept me interested the whole way through. We're following Liv -- who has amnesia and if she falls asleep, her memory resets and she cant remember anything she did that day. Each day she's able to piece together the fact that someone has been murdered, and the police think she did it.

The story got a bit slow and repetitive in the middle-- since we are having to watch Liv reset each time she falls asleep. But once the ball gets rolling and the pieces start to click into place, the story is hard to put down.

This book really confused me, though I had high hopes after enjoying Goldin’s previous books! The time stamping messed me up a bit and I couldn’t get into the story.

This book contains a trope that's revealed rather quickly, so I don't feel bad about revealing it here, and that's amnesia. Liv forgets the previous day every time she goes to sleep, waking up believing it's just over two years ago. This makes the plot feel very clunky as she makes the same discovery over and over again. Frankly, the chapters from her perspective in the present didn't actually add anything to the plot because she was pretty much lost the entire time, trying to figure out her role in the events that unfolded. Towards the end of the book, it made things very confusing as she visited the same locations and encountered the same people as 24 hours ago. This was likely done on purpose, as she "comes full circle," but it just made things hard to track.
Aside from Liv's present-day perspective, we also have chapters from the perspective of two homicide detectives as they investigate the murder. These chapters felt bland, complete with generic cop names (Halliday and Lavelle) and almost no character story. These chapters didn't hold any suspense and really just served to give the reader more information.
Finally, we have past-Liv's perspective. This was one I actually enjoyed because this is where all of the unsettling moments really took place. There's a creepy artist, a stalker waiter, someone follows her a few times, and small changes in her apartment show that someone had been there. It had me scared to go to sleep! Unfortunately, the big reveal of what happened in the past is disappointing. I think the number of red herrings did the plot a disservice because the twist was rather dull, and the author didn't actually flesh out motive or provide an explanation for any of the red herrings. Sure, that person may be innocent, but then why they hell were they acting so sketchy? The reveal of what happened in the present hinged on us caring about what happened in the past, making the present's reveal pretty much a non-issue.
Overall, I think we had a promising start that quickly went downhill with the use of a tired trope. Underdeveloped characters and a critically weak plot made matters worse. This book unfortunately wasn't for me, but I still think it has the ability to appeal to a wider audience.

A twisty thriller about a woman who wakes up in a taxi, without her phone, a bloody knife in her hands, and two words scribbled onto her skin in black ink: STAY AWAKE.

Told from multiple perspectives, this book is definitely a page-turner. Readers that don't care for unreliable narrators may want to stay away, but fans of The Woman in Cabin 10 or The Woman in the Window will enjoy this propulsive pick.

This book started off so strong and interesting. I was drawn in to what was happening and why the MC had to stay awake… then somewhere along the lines I couldn’t stay awake reading it because it became such a bore fest. My interest plummeted.

"“Where did you put it?”
“Put what?”
“The knife,” he hisses. “What did you do with the damn knife, Liv? You took the goddamn knife when I was in the bathroom, and you walked off with it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. This must be a wrong number.” I resist the urge to hang up the phone. I feel compelled to know more.
“Don’t tell me you fell asleep and forgot everything again?” he says.
He frightens me with the accuracy of his comment. “How do you know I woke up with no memory?”
“Because you lose your goddamn memory every time you fall asleep. Listen, here’s what I want you to do…”"
--------------------------------------
"“Lack of sleep does horrible things to a person’s mind,” said the social worker. “It can make some people psychotic.”"

Liv Reese has a problem with sleep. Whenever she nods off, pop go the last two years, wiped clean. Thus the messages she has written to herself on her body, ( I look like a human graffiti board.) reminding her to remain awake at all costs. Not remembering might be useful for coping with a bad, newly lost relationship, but there is no upside to forgetting for Liv. Coming to in a cab crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, she has no understanding of the world in which she now struggles. On trying to get into her brownstone apartment, she finds it occupied, not by her roomie, but by strangers, who are not exactly eager to let her in, and it looks oddly changed. It was Summer last thing she remembers, but seeing her breath in the air challenges that. She finds a clue on her fingers and heads to what seems likely to be a familiar locale, a bar, Nocturnal. At least someone seems to know her there. “You’re afraid of what you do in your sleep.” he tells her. Should she be? That bloody knife she had been toting around does not ease her concerns.

Reese is having a bad day. Over and over and over. Not quite the sort of charming fantasy rom-com-do-over one might see in, say Ground Hog Day or Fifty First Dates. Nope. There are no yucks to be found here. As you no doubt noted from the book quote at the top of this, she is in a bit of trouble. This is much more the Memento vibe, trying to stay alive while also desperate to find out what caused her to go blank two years ago. The same day does not repeat like a video game level. The real world continues on its merry, or not so merry way. It is only Liv who resets.

So what caused her to blank out? That is her quest, the driving force of the novel. All she has to do is figure out what all the writing on her body, and other locales, means, or can lead her to. Prominent among these is an all caps “STAY AWAKE” above her knuckles. “WAKE UP” adorns an arm, coincidentally the very thing painted in blood on the window of a man who had just been murdered.

Goldin must have been driving a Bis Rexx dump truck when she was loading up her protagonist. Being pursued by someone who is probably a psycho-killer, looking like a suspect in the murder, while not being able to recall anything from the past two years, including whether she is or is not, herself, a psycho killer, makes for a wee bit of stress. And then having to cope with all this while completely exhausted from lack of sleep, wired from mass consumption of coffee and anti-sleeping pills, and having no idea who you can trust. On the other hand, loading a character up with such a surfeit of misery makes it almost mandatory to root for her. It’s like Atlas is holding up the world and Zeus decides to toss on a few extra planets for laughs. Awww, c’mon, give the poor thing a break. So, sure, easy peasy. Have a nice day. Sheesh!

We actually get a day and a half with Liv, beginning on Wednesday 2:42 A.M. and ending on Thursday 2:45 P.M. Every chapter begins with a time stamp. It is an intense thirty-six hours. Did she or didn’t she murder that man? Will the cops or won’t they catch her and put her away for the murder? Will she or won’t she find out what caused her memory failure? Will she learn who the psycho is who is pursuing her? Will he catch her? Will she be able to stay awake until answers are found? Is there anyone on her side?

We see two time periods, the present and two years prior. The present is divided pretty much between Liv’s ongoing travails and Detective Darcy Halliday’s investigation of the recent murder. The two-year lookback is a singular third-person telling.

Chapters alternate in the present in groups between Liv’s ongoing travails, and Detective Darcy and her partner working the case. So, a few chaps on Liv, a few on the investigation, and then a lookback. There are sixty-six chapters in the book. Twenty-nine of these consist of Liv’s first-person narrative. Twenty-two follow Detective Halliday and her partner as they investigate. Thirteen look back to the events of two years earlier, as they lead up to the mind-blanking event. (Yes, I know that leaves the total a couple short. There are two that do not fit the major divisions.) All the chapters are short, so you can catch a few pieces of the novel whenever time allows, on the train, at bedtime, while waiting for your next crudité delivery to arrive, and not feel compelled to read on just to finish a long chapter. I mean, you might want to keep on anyway, but because the story had drawn you in, not because of any obsessive need to complete a chapter no matter how lengthy. I don’t know anyone who would do such a thing. Can’t imagine it.

Wait, wait, what is that beeping sound? Oh, no, another load for Liv! Not enough to contend with already, try adding (piling?) on no keys, no purse, no ID, no phone. She is about as isolated as a person can be in a city of eight million. This also counterbalances any hostility we might have toward her for being a food writer for a chichi magazine called Cultura.

Trauma can do terrible things to one’s brain. But wait there’s more. Liv has had that blank spot since her trauma, but was able to have a life anyway. However, that daily reboot problem is of very recent vintage, only a few weeks. Previously, she had been able to form new memories just fine. What changed? I found Goldin’s explanation for this a weak point in the story. I have a few other gripes, which I am putting under a spoiler tag, so if you have not read the book, please feel free to skip this. (view spoiler)

I enjoyed the character of Detective Darcy Halliday, tough, smart, able to access her softer side to find ways to the truth. I also liked following the procedural investigation, but not so much her interaction with her more experienced male partner, Detective LaVelle. Just did not at all care whether they bonded with each other or not.

There are surely many, many films and books that this might be compared to, in addition to the few noted above. Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Tana French’s In the Woods, the latest iteration, Surface, on Apple TV. The Jason Bourne Series is the most famous. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is another. Many live in the world of fantasy or science-fiction. But few of the real-world-based (not fantasy or sci-fi) amnesia tales outside Memento incorporate a daily reset. It definitely adds to the stress level. (For a book about a real real-world person afflicted with an inability to form new memories, you might want to check out Patient H.M. by Luke Dittrich)

The tempo goes from frantic to OMG!!! So there is no danger of you drifting off while reading. Does it all come back to her? Oh, puh-leez. I am not gonna spoil that one. But you know how these things go. Sometimes it all comes back, often with another knock to the head. Sometimes nothing comes back, and sometimes parts return, but not the entirety. You will just have to see for yourselves. I am spoiling nothing, however, in telling you that we readers find out why she developed her initial amnesia two years back.

Red herrings are allowed to swim freely, which is perfectly ok. They can be delicious. Most of the supporting cast felt a bit thin. Darcy is well done, but most of the actors were not on the page long enough to develop all that much. A killer’s motivation seemed a stretch. NYC was exploited as a setting far less than it might have been. On the plus side, a (probably-deranged) performance artist adds a particularly poignant bit of menace. But the damsel-in-distress with serious memory issues and darkness descending is a pretty killer core, so the scaffolding erected around it is of lesser importance.

Bottom line is that this was a fun read, a page-turning thriller, an excellent (end-of) Summer treat. Best part is that if you fall asleep while reading, it will still be there for you when you wake up.

"The white, as yet unpainted, part of the wall, is graffitied with an array of random sentences. Most are written in pen. A couple are in marker. One appears to be written by a finger dipped in black coffee.

Memories lie.
Don’t trust anyone.
He’s coming for me."

Review posted – August 19, 2022

Publication date – August 9, 2022


I received an eARE of Stay Awake from St. Martin’s Press in return for something, but I just cannot remember what. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

For the full review, with EXTRA STUFF and links please see this at https://cootsreviews.com/2022/08/19/stay-awake-by-megan-golden/

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for providing me with an advanced digital copy for review.

This book started out strong and then just...fizzled out. The writing was not great, the dialogue felt disjointed and unbelievable at times, and everything was too much tell and not enough show. I was a fan of the author’s previous work, The Night Swim, but this one did not hit for me. I guessed the ending, which also took away from my overall enjoyment of this book. Hopefully there was an edit before the final print version came out, but this just did not hit for me. I will look forward to the author’s next book, however.

Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a cab, late at night, with no clue how it happened. She then discovers every time she falls asleep, her memory is erased, and she can’t remember anything from the past two years. Liv sees a news report about a murder and the killer’s message “STAY AWAKE” written on the window. The same message is written on Liv’s hands, which can’t be a coincidence. Detective Halliday is on the case and is determined to catch the killer, whoever it may be.
This is probably one of my favorite thrillers of the year. It had me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what was actually happening. This psychological thriller was extremely fast-paced and you don’t want to put it down. I found myself sympathizing with Liv because of her memory loss. This could have gotten repetitive because each time she fell asleep, she had to rediscover the same information again about her memory. In this case, it worked with the story and made me as the reader want to know more of what was happening. This definitely reminded me of the movie 50 First Dates but make it a thriller. I highly recommend this if you like dual POVs, dual timelines, and an unreliable narrator.

Megan Goldin has such a unique writing style. I have really enjoyed reading her books.
A very different approach to the unreliable narrator, which surprisingly works pretty well in this book.
A fast-paced thriller that kept me guessing, and as usual lately with thrillers I read, I thought I figured it out but it turned out to be a completely different outcome, which I am ok with.

This book was fast paced and kept me wondering how it was all going to come together in the end. There were definitely some parts of the story that didn't fully wrap up, but honestly, I thought this book was so entertaining that I didn't really care all that much! This is my second book by Megan Goldin and both I have absolutely loved! This was a unique storyline and I am a sucker for multiple POVs/timelines. Def pick this one up for spooky season!

Okay, this book was incredibly good. It was not what I was expecting and I enjoyed it a lot. It became a little repetitive which you’ll understand when you read it but it was so worth it. I warn you, it is a little predictable, or maybe a lot, but Megan Goldin delivers such an entertaining story that it won’t matter to you hit you figure out what the heck is happening halfway through. Golding is an instant buy author for me.

OH My, I loved this. I loved the story it felt so original.
It wasn't the same gaslight troupe that has been going around.
The twist was a good one that I did not see coming.

I would highly recommend this book

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for allowing me to read and review this book before publishing.

Stay Awake follows Liv a girl that forgets everything when she falls asleep. Liv wakes up one day and cannot remember anything since two years prior. She has messages written on her hands and is missing her belongings. As Liv tries to figure out what is going on with her there is a murder that has happened and the words “Stay Awake” are written in blood at the crime scene. Liv has the same message written on her hands.

This book is written in the perspective of Liv after the murder, Liv from the past, and the detectives that are looking into the murder. I really enjoyed how we were piecing together everything that happened just as Liv was doing. I can honestly say I didn’t see the killer coming. One thing I got kind of stuck on is that I would have liked to know more about why the killer did it and the motives.

If you enjoy thrillers you will enjoy this and I recommend picking it up. One note, don’t read it before bed!