Sleep was at times hard to read, as the main character was understandably conflicted and for us the readers it was easy to say she should have spoken up, but understandable why she didn't. I was engaged with the story, but the writing didn't flow for me, which had me losing interest at times. Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.

*3.5 stars*

This is an emotional take on one individual's trauma surrounding consent, motherhood, and familial relationships. These characters and their interactions with each other felt genuine, which made many scenes in the novel that much more intense. I was invested. Like our main character, Margaret, I worried for her children whenever they disappeared from the page. It was upsetting to see how many times she should have said something to another character and never did, but it makes this story realistic. I wanted confrontation and restorative justice, and I can't say that that is what I got. However, by the end, Margaret is own her own restorative path, which seems fitting for who she is as a character.

A character-driven debut novel by magazine editor/article writer Jones. Underlying the life of Margaret, a divorced mother of two girls, is her undisclosed childhood sexual abuse by her brother, Neal. Elizabeth, Margaret’s perfectionist mother, functions from a core of anger, stemming from her husband’s affair; her rageful behavior intensifies after a series of strokes. Ex-husband Ezra was a bland husband, but is an attentive father. Current partner, Duncan, provides sexual adventure, but no deep emotional connection. Some good, flowing prose and imagery here, but awkward, choppy transitions between Margaret’s childhood and current-day life plague the novel. Not the most satisfying read, but the author’s potential is certainly apparent.

I loved the characters in this story: relatable Margaret, exasperating Elizabeth, lovable Danny, safe Duncan, and Biddy...I desperately want her to be my best friend too. This was a well-told piece of fiction that I will be thinking about for a while.

Sleep by Honor Jones is a novel about family. It depicts what it means to be a daughter and a mother, including the love, transgressions, and disappointments that can happen in our closest relationships. Margaret is a mother to two young daughters. Recently divorced, she is balancing single motherhood, her relationship with her ex-husband, and the call of a new lover. Margaret is also a daughter who had a fraught relationship with her own mother. Her relationship with her daughters is colored by the pain and trauma that Margaret experienced growing up. This book is honest and unflinching in portraying the realities and vulnerability of both childhood and parenthood. Facing her past is empowering, and in the end this book celebrates Margaret’s capacity for love and acceptance. Thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead books for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was well-written with good character and story development, and I was satisfied with the ending, which I'm not always. I thought there was a good balance of seeing Margaret's past and how it impacted her present, and I wasn't left feeling like I wanted more from either timeline.

Thank you to Penguin Group Riverhead and NetGalley for the eARC.

The author truly captures the lifelong friendship between Margaret and Biddy. It felt much like my relationship with my childhood best friend. The repressed sexual trauma that Margaret experienced as a child is woven throughout, as is her complex relationship with her mother. I found the characters well-developed, but the jumps in the timeline were a bit difficult to follow.

I felt the nature of the book was different than many I have read in the last few months. I did find myself waiting to get back to the story and thinking about what I had read. I believe the author is very talented and created a set of very realistic characters and stories within. Overall I think it was a great read.

Great character development and tough subject matter that the author handles astutely. The book has many overlapping layers that the author wrapped up and left the reader hopeful for the characters.

Sleep by Honor Jones is a well-crafted, engaging, character-driven novel about a woman struggling to toggle between her life as a child and her life as an adult. The protagonist, Margaret, has a difficult relationship with Elizabeth, her domineering and perfectionistic mother. The author hints at issues from Elizabeth’s childhood that shaped her ways of being and describes in detail her husband’s affair that led to a genteel mental breakdown. There is plenty of rage to go around. In addition to her birth family, Margaret is recently divorced from her children’s father Ezra. The end of her marriage is liberating for Margaret but provides more fuel for her mother’s disapproval. Both issues are complicated by Margaret’s unacknowledged sexual abuse by her older brother Neal and his friends. Sleep may be semi-autobiographical because it mirrors parts of Jones’s article in the October 2022 issue of The Atlantic titled, “The Only Two Choices I’ve Ever Made: Motherhood and Divorce.” This is not explored in the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Riverhead for the eARC in exchange for this review.

Sleep is a character driven book which centers on a dysfunctional family through flashbacks. Margaret has past traumas that she hasn’t dealt with or acknowledged to the family. Whenever Margaret got close to revealing the truth, her mother, Elizabeth makes it very clear that she doesn’t want to hear about the trauma much less discuss it. Margaret tries very hard to be the mother to her two girls that Elizabeth wasn’t. The characters are fully developed and consistent. The lack of communication was maddening to me. Watching Margaret consistently make bad relationship decisions, with the exception of her best friend, was frustrating. Clearly the author did a great job describing these characters for me to react so strongly to the protagonist.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Riverhead for this advanced readers copy,

Honor Jones gives us a relationship driven book where Margret lies at the heart of multiple relationships that pull in many different directions. The book flows forward and back in time and show how her brother Neil and mother Elizabeth formed the basis of the woman she is now. Her defenses are always up and there is an underlying anger simmering in the background. The dynamics between her and her mother is strong and Margret never allows herself to be outdone by her own mother.
The book shows how damaged Elizabeth also is, but Margret is blinded to it. She seems to see the world in how it affects her. Yet this is also the time of the “Me too” movement. Can Margret gain self confidence and stand up for herself now? Is there a transference from herself to her daughters? The book could have been a little tighter. I loved the attention to the subject matter though.

A recently divorced Brooklyn mother takes her two young daughters for a visit to the home she grew up in which stirs memories of a past trauma that she has not dealt with. Through flashbacks, the story is told of her difficult family and partner relationships as well as the childhood friendship that sustains her. The characters are well developed and their stories are told in subtle ways that are more impactful that the in-your-face novel this could have been. Definitely worth a read with an especially satisfying ending.

Margaret, still troubled by a childhood trauma comes to terms with her new life. She’s recently divorced from Ezra and trying to be a better mother than her own, but we see they’re more alike than she realizes. She’s got a spicy and fulfilling new relationship with Duncan, also a single father. Margaret is a strongly developed character and her dynamic with her mother is especially poignant. Her writing had a nice flow with some original metaphors and good imagery. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Riverhead for giving me the opportunity to read this advanced copy.

This book did a great job of highlighting a sensitive and uncomfortable issue. The book itself wasn't one that I loved but it was interesting and made me think.

Liked this a lot, and I'm extremely picky about tales of Brooklyn motherhood. It's beautifully written and not at all overwrought, and the elder mother-daughter relationship was so finely depicted - a difficult and fraught relationship that doesn't preclude a kind of love. Often I dislike characters who are too similar to me, but I'd really like to hang out with Margaret and envy her best friendship with Biddy.

SLEEP reads like a slow-creeping, deep in the pit of your stomach ache, anxiety twisting and knotting and rooting around in a way that made it nearly impossible to put down. It is a tough read, but I really loved it.