I can’t thank NetGalley and the publishers enough for this advance reader’s copy in exchange for my review of this one. Megan Goldin is the author of one of my absolute favorites, The Night Swim, and I’ve been anxiously hoping to read another one by the author.

For fans of works like Memento, and dissociative identity, amnesia etc, this one is a hit. Our protagonist Liv wakes up next to a dead body with the murder weapon and can’t remember how she got there - I loved that throughout the story, we weren’t sure if Liv was a good guy or a bad guy, but it didn’t even matter - she was easy to like. This one flips back and forth from the past to the present, so if you’re not one to enjoy that style, this one might not work for you - I personally thought it was easy to figure out if I was in the present or the past.

My only slight criticism, minor as it is, this one wrapped up with a nice pretty bow, but doesn’t really account for what the story had been building on - and there was a side plot with the waiter and stalking that never really played out? Maybe it just played in to some of the paranoia that Liv was experiencing. Either way, this one was such an easy read that I finished in just under a day - highly recommend for a fast paced thriller!

Thank you again NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Interesting concept. I liked the idea of the boom, but I did find some parts were a bit boring and not as good as her first novel.

What a rollercoaster ride this was!! The story follows Liv Reese, who suffers from a rare form of amnesia . Every time she falls asleep, her brain sets back 2 years. Throw in the fact there’s a murder and she’s holding the bloody weapon with no recollection of the recent events, and you have yourself a thrilling read. Follow Liv as she tries to piece together what happened , who she is, and how she got from point A to point B. I love the timeline shifting , and the different perspectives. the characters were likable and not disappointing. Even the detectives had personalities about them that made them stand out and make you want to know more. The conclusion had me shook!!! I really hope to see this story make it to the big screen someday. It’s literally that good. I received this copy from NetGalley and special thanks to them for giving me the opportunity to read this early. I literally had my nose stuck in this book constantly and finished it in a few days.

Liv wakes up in the back of a taxi and has no recollection how she got there!! She’s dropped off in the middle of the night at who she thinks is Amy’s apartment but complete strangers open the door. Then more strange things keep happening. This book pulled me right in from the very first page and it just kept going and going!!! It’s got a “50 First Dates” movie vibe. I found myself not wanting to put it down and couldn’t wait to find out how it was going to end. I really enjoyed all the characters! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early release in exchange for my honest review. I can’t wait to read Megan Goldin’s next book!!

Between a 3.5 and 4, rounding up per my ARC review policy: This was highly entertaining, which is the number one thing I come to a mystery thriller for. It was a very fun premise (our MC has amnesia of the last 2 years that is retriggered every time she goes to sleep) that I've seen in visual media but never in a book. I also loved getting a detective POV - it feels like big thrillers these days rarely get a non-PI detective POV. That said, my biggest issue with this one was our MC and how wishy washy she was... not in the present day timeline, but in the past timeline. She seemed kind of dim, and I think it would have been more effective if there had been more of a defined contrast between her being very sharp pre-amnesia and very disoriented post-amnesia.

Still, all in all, this delivered the entertainment factor I was looking for and I think this officially puts Megan Goldin in an auto-read category for me

4/5. This was a very thrilling and fast read. I went into it mostly blind and had a lot of fun reading it and was pleasantly surprised by the amnesia plot point, only because I've never seen it done like this before. To have an MC who will always lose their memory upon waking up is unique, fresh and thrilling. I am also an extreme self-induced insomniac so this made it all the more fun to read. I did have several issues with the point, the first being the POV of the detectives. It was by far the weakest point of the book. It was too dry and bland & merely informative, without any tension suspense or edge. I would've loved it if it was done in 1st POV as well with added suspense and thrill from the tension of trying to find the murderer. I think the added background of the military stories etc weakened it and made it boring. it served nothing and didn't flesh out the characters either in the way the author hoped it would. Liv's POV pretty much carried this book. I also didn't like how the detective's POV fed us too many answers and made it too easy to predict every single plot twist. I pretty much knew exactly where everything was going pretty early on. I wish we were given maybe a delay in the povs to allow us to be led on/led astray substantially by Liv's POV. I was only nicely surprised by one thing in the end but it had to do mostly because we weren't given an exact motive behind it. So that made it kind of deflating as I read it since I had unanswered questions. But nonetheless still very much enjoyed this book.

What a unique thriller! I was obsessed with this story and in a lesser authors hands it could have been a disaster. The continual shift between current day with Liv not remembering anything every time she wakes up, her life prior to the trauma that caused the amnesia, and the events that led up to the crime in question, was executed flawlessly. I was able to easily follow the shift in timeline and couldn’t turn those e-book pages fast enough.⁠
The other thing I loved about this was that though Liv was an unreliable MC, it wasn’t because she was painted as a weak woman who was drunk, but because of her medical condition. I’m glad to see that tired trope fall to the wayside while keeping the fun of an unreliable narrator in play. ⁠
Stay Awake was a fantastic follow up to The Night Swim that caught me and didn’t let me go until the end. It’s clear that Goldin has cemented her place with other great thriller authors.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the e-arc! I loved THE NIGHT SWIM, so I was really excited to read Megan Goldin's newest book! STAY AWAKE is out 8/9/22

SUMMARY:
Liv wakes up, with no memory of what happened or how she got there. Her apartment isn't hers, she can't get ahold of her friends, and she has random writing all over her arms. As time goes on, she quickly realizes she doesn't remember anything from the past two years. To add to her confusion, there's been a murder and the cctv clip of the suspect leaving the scene looks a lot like her. Now it seems like someone is after her, worried she's going to remember what happened two years ago.

MY THOUGHTS:
This book was quick and very good! I spent the almost the entirety of one day reading the whole book.

STAY AWAKE is a female detective thriller/psychological thriller- because we get Detective Halliday figuring out the case, but we also get the timeline of Liv figuring out her memory loss, and what happened two years ago- and the story bounces around between all three.

While Liv forgetting all of her memories is sort of unrealistic, it did create a good thriller. I was as invested as she was in figuring out what is going on. She didn't know who to trust and became so paranoid and it created all of the suspense!

I didn't see the ending coming, and while it wasn't unbelievable, I wanted more from it. I needed whys and a little bit of explanation.

I loved the concept of an unreliable narrator who the reader experiences forget her memories - many times, the reader was more in the know than the narrator herself, which made for an engaging story. However, I didn’t find the reveal particularly compelling and there were a few extraneous characters who didn’t seem to serve a purpose other than to throw the reader of the scent of who the true villain was.

At first, after reading this book, I thought it was great! Fast paced, unique storyline, so engrossing. Then when I sat down to write this review, I frealized there's a huge plot hole, and a couple minor ones that just couldn't be overlooked. Like I'm now wondering how it made it this far in the publishing process without being noticed or addressed. I just really hope it's taken care of before it's actually released. Had it not been for that, this would've easily been a 5 star read.

***STOP HERE! SPOILERS AHEAD ***

*** SPOILERS!!! ***
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Why was the killer stalking Liv before anything happened? I get that he was stalking her after the murders to prevent her from outing him if her memory returned, but why before!?! Why the milk in the fridge? Why the flowers addressed to her & the meal in the oven, before the murder? There was no explanation of why and as far as I could tell, no reason for it. There's also the art show with the mysterious artist that goes unexplained, the waiter that kept calling, the investor. I get that they were supposed to distract and throw off the reader but they really just left me confused without any real point or complete explanation.

Megan Goldin consistently writes edge-of-your-seat, unputdownable books! I loved Stay Awake. I generally read several books at a time, dabbling in a chapter here and there of each, but when I started Stay Awake, I was invested in figuring out what was going on with Liv until the very end. This book goes back and forth in time, and switches between the FBI agent looking for Liv and Liv's point of view as we figure out why she can't remember anything and if she actually killed that man in the apartment that she's never seen before and doesn't remember being with.

Megan has cemented herself as one of my favorite thriller authors, and I can't wait to see what she writes next.

Liv Reese wakes up and don't remember where is she and what happened.

It is an exceptional psychological thriller full of suspense. It is exactly that kind of book where you cannot sleep or think about anything else until you finish it.

Definitely going to read more my Megan Goldin.

I requested this book from NetGalley as it looked like a very interesting and fun thriller and seemed to have early rave reviews. I thought it would be intriguing to follow a character with memory gaps to see what unfolds. Sadly this book did not work for me. There seems to be a lot of plot holes and the “twist” was pretty obvious from the very beginning… repetitive and predictable. The story just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

I would read another book from this author though in the future as to me it feels like the author has a lot of potential and I could see future books being better with more practice. Thank you NetGalley and St Martins Press for allowing me to access this book early and provide my honest review.

I really enjoyed this fast-paced and unique book. The story centers on Liv, who literally can't remember anything from the last 2 years every time she falls asleep. She has to leave herself clues on what to do and not to do in order to pull it together. That's not working so well, so when she becomes tied to a murder, she really can't be sure what she did or didn't do and has to try to put all the pieces together before she loses her memory again. You also get some chapters focused on the police work to solve the murder.

Liv was a likable character though sometimes I was frustrated with some of the decisions she made. Then again, who knows what I would do in a similar situation? It was fun to try to solve the mystery behind Liv's memory loss along with the current murder mystery. I thought the detective work was well done too- it wasn't super detailed but it felt like they considered logical conclusions throughout the process (though I did think it was weird that the police detective was always referrred to by her full name at the beginning of each of her chapters). There was a good dynamic between the detectives as well.

The end was a surprise and I thought the author did a good job in connecting it back to other things that happened to tie up loose ends. The book moved at a very fast cilp the entire way through.

Overall, this was a good read and stood out as a unique storyline. I'd recommend it to those who like psychological thrillers and mysteries. Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was incredible. I could not stop thinking about it when I was not reading it. The twists and turns were so unexpected and well done. I highly recommend and look forward to reading more from Goldin!

Whoa Stay Awake kept me awake! Liv Reese can’t fall asleep because when she wakes up she doesn’t remember anything. Definitely a fast paced thriller! I really liked night swim and stay awake was even better!!

Stay Awake by Megan Goldin is a keep you on the edge of your seat kind of book and I couldn't put this one down! Live Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no phone, purse or even how she ended up there. She has "Stay Awake" written on her hands and arms. What the heck is going on? The twists were great! I definitely look forward to reading more books by Megan Goldin!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this e-book!

A great thriller that I enjoyed tremendously. Would recommend if you like thrillers or the authors previous work. This was my first by this author and I enjoyed it a lot.

Loved it, loved it, loved it!!!! What a great thriller! Thank you so much to the publisher I enjoyed it immensely! It had a similar vibe like the movie Memento but it was so much better! Can wait for authors new book!

Perfect thriller for a fun summer read! The plot will really keep you guessing because the main character loses her short term memory every time she falls asleep and has to reset each time she wakes. You are caught between desperately wanting her to stay awake and waiting to see how she fits the pieces of her puzzle together. Did she murder someone? Why can’t she remember what happened? You will race through to find all the answers.
Huge thank you to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.