The premise is interesting - a wife left in the dire circumstances after her writer husband has been attacked and who is dealing with the scary after-effects of his head injury, including the personality changes. And the issues Jane has not seen before starts to unravel...
Yet, the real execution is weaker - while I find all the challenges Jane has been facing sounding believable and relatable, the "big mystery" motive is something thoroughly differing from the picture it is hinting at - no problem with this in general, but here the revelation felt somehow random, without any backing and clues through the plot developments.
Would love for this to go for the full-on domestic thriller instead, as Jane's and Leon's marriage subplot was the most interesting one and best written one, too!

#OpenYourEyes #NetGalley



A really good thriller that asks "what would you do if your life turned inside out and upside down in an instant?"

The author is really good at keeping us guessing and wanting to find out how the story unfolds from start to finish.

Recommended

My thanks for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review from Netgalley.

4 stars!

An easy and entertaining domestic drama mystery that kept me engaged from start to finish!

This audiobook was just what I needed! An intriguing family drama. A crime committed with many possible suspects. Unique, interesting and questionable characters. A constant building pull of suspense. A subplot centred around the publishing world. A highly enjoyable audio narrator.

This title is from my NetGalley backlist and I’m so happy I found the time to fit it in. Thank you to my lovely local library for the audio loan to accompany the read. Thank you to Grove Press for my review copy!

The premise of the book is great and the author really delivers. Great read. Highly recommended. .

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I'd not read any books by this author before, but I am keen to read more. A gripping plot, well developed characters and a great twist.

I did like this book and look forward to reading more from this author. Thank you for the advanced copy.

Sometimes we don't want to see what is directly in front of us, until we are forced. Jane's perfect life ends when her husband is attacked and she has to face life on her own, and soon discovers secrets she didn't want to face. Recommended.

I wanted to keep reading to find out the ending. It started off fast and interesting for me, but fell a little flat as the story went on. It was difficult to connect with several of the characters, yet it kept me entertained enough to keep going.

Jane and her husband Leon are both authors. Leon is a successful writer of gritty crime fiction, while Jane is still unpublished. Someone shoots two nails into Leon’s head, leaving him with memory loss, impaired ability to concentrate and personality changes. Jane feels lost, threatened and confused, even before she discovers that Leon has been hiding things from her.

Advice to Jane from a publisher: “.... we did feel [your style] might be suited to the domestic thriller genre. Gone Girl and the like. The genre is showing no sign of cooling off, quite the contrary actually, and we’re always on the lookout for something fresh.” ... “And do you think you might be able to come up with a story, something set in the home, something with a woman as the main character? We want a normal woman, someone a bit like yourself perhaps. Do you think you might be able to create something thrilling, something that puts the main character in all kinds of jeopardy?” Unfortunately, there are way too many authors taking this advice. This author certainly took it to heart, and in the last lines of the book she seemed pretty smug about it. As far as I am concerned, the domestic thriller has been done to death and is past its sell by date so I am probably not the right audience for this book. Perhaps there are readers who will find it “fresh”, but I did not. This was not a thriller. It was women’s fiction with a crime thrown in.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

I had a difficult time finishing this book. I kept losing interest. I think I read three other books while I was trying to finish this one.

The characters were not engaging to me. The plot was somewhat creative I just didn’t care for it.

This was the first book I read by Paula Daly. I may try one more of her books before I give up on her as an author. “Keep Your Friends Close” looked like one I might like.

I received this galley from NetGalley.

Great twisty thriller. After Jane's husband Leon is attacked in their own driveway, Jane learns that her husband has secrets that she had no clue about. Starting from an interesting premise-how much to really know about those that we are closest to-the book keeps a good pace with twists and reveals that will have you rethinking your conclusions all the way to the end.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and to Netgalley. I gave this book 3 stars. I found that the story was interesting enough for me to want to know what was going to happen next, but I never really felt that I connected to the characters or got pulled into the book. There was a small surprise (not enough to be considered a twist), but for the most part the book was fairly straight forward and predictable.

Paula Daly

Open Your Eyes

Paula Daly is superb at writing psychological thrillers based on ordinary families and Open Your Eyes is testament to this.

Jane is happily married with two small children, she teaches creative writing to bring in a bit of money but would love to write a bestseller but all she achieves from publishers is rejection letters whilst Leon, her husband, is a bestselling crime writer – I could feel Jane’s envy at her husband’s success pouring out of her, although she is quite happy to keep the status quo.

Until one day her husband is viciously attacked in the drive and ends up in hospital in a coma and Jane starts delving into who would want to hurt Leon and why. The twists and turns and mind games that are played out as Jane begins to open her eyes to who her husband really is and what he is capable off.

Paula Daly is a master at knowing how far she can go with her plot and still keep it believable. Her characterization is second to none and she pays attention to the tiniest detail so by the end all the threads are woven tightly together.

I read this in all of two days about a week ago. Honestly, I don't remember a ton of it, but it was just the quick blast-through mystery I needed. I burned through it and enjoyed it all.

Another amazing mystery by Paula Daly. I love her writing style, the humor in her stories, how her characters develop and let us know themselves in a clever and subtle way. In this novel we have the additional delight of Daly talking about writing, about how to build up characters, how dialogue is supposed to sound, how not to deliver backstory. I risk to say it's one of her best books but they are all great..

Thank you Grove Atlantic for allowing me to review Open Your Eyes by Paula Daly.

Jane and Leon are heading out for a birthday celebration when she heads back inside the house to grab something. When she returns to the car, Leon crashes the car into a neighbors gate. At the hospital he is discovered to have two nails in his skull, a vicious attack with no suspects.
Dealing with her husband’s brain injury and the resulting amnesia and side effects, as well as their two young children, Jane discovers she may not know her husband as well as she believed.
Leon can not help her piece together his actions from before the attack, so Jane is left scrambling to keep her life and marriage together while keeping her family safe.
Open Your Eyes was much more slow burn drama than I usually enjoy. I did find the second half of the book really picked up and I ended up enjoying it a lot more than the first half. An interesting and complicated plot, there was little to no way you could have guessed the ending or why Leon was attacked.

A warning: I dare you to start this one late at night, because you’ll stay up all night to finish it. I know this, because I pretty much did. I’ve read a few of British author Paula Daly’s books, and really enjoyed them (especially The Mistake I Made) and this one is her best yet.

Jane Campbell is a young wife and mother of two young kids, as well as a writer who has been trying to get published for going on ten years. It hasn’t done much for her self-esteem, and although she teaches creative writing part time, it does nothing to fill the void. It doesn’t help that her husband, Leon, is a wildly successful crime author. She’s proud of him but watching his success while she stagnates has taken its toll. Nonetheless, she loves him wildly and adores their kids, Martha, barely three, and four-year-old Jack. If life isn’t perfect for Jane, she’s happy enough, but it all changes when they pile into the car to visit Leon’s mother for his birthday.

Before they can pull out of the driveway, they’re confronted by their elderly neighbor Lawrence, who has had it in for them since last summer, when they’d went on vacation and made an unforgivable error, at least in Lawrence’s view.

It seemed we’d made the staggeringly grave error of leaving my car on Lawrence’s side of the street for Three Whole Weeks while we were away. What we should have done, according to Lawrence, was to leave my car in our own driveway, the single space usually occupied by Leon’s car. This would have shown proper consideration to the other residents and of course would have been the right thing to do.

We apologized. We didn’t see what the big deal was but we were new to the area and didn’t want any acrimony. We pretended we were sorry. We sent flowers to Rose, who was rather distressed after having been forced to look at my car for almost a month, and we did our utmost to placate them.

This time Lawrence is upset because the Campbell family cat, Bonita, is crapping in their flower beds and Rose is practically fainting from the stress. Leon has just about had enough of them, however, and he’s not in a placating mood. When Leon asks Jane to run into the house to grab a few more beers to take on the trip, Jane is happy to oblige: she has no wish to hear the argument as it rages on. After taking a bit more time than she usually would, she heads back out to the car and right into a nightmare.

I climbed into the passenger side and fastened my seat belt. Leon was staring straight ahead, still with that hint of madness in his eyes that he got whenever he had to deal with Lawrence, so I said, ‘You’re not going to carry this on all day, are you?’

He didn’t reply.

‘You’re ignoring me now as well?’ I continued crossly. ‘What the hell did I do? It’s not like it’s my fault that Lawrence always—’

Without speaking, without checking his mirror, Leon stamped on the gas.

And the car flew backwards.

I cried out in terror. Cried out because my first thought was: Are the kids strapped in? Are they safe?

There was no time to check.

‘Leon!’ I shouted. ‘Leon, stop!’

But by now we were already stationary again. The car having smashed into Lawrence’s garden wall behind us.

Leon’s forehead was on the steering wheel and he was unresponsive.

The children began to cry.

What follows, frankly, is akin to a waking nightmare for Jane. Leon has been shot in the head with a nail gun, and he’s put in a medically induced coma after surgery. Who could have done this horrible thing to him? Was it Lawrence? Jane doesn’t like the guy, but he’s in his 70s, and she can’t imagine him doing something like that, not over a cat. While Leon is in the hospital, Jane must juggle the children and figure out how to get through this while worrying about the aftermath of Leon’s injuries. She’s also, in the eyes of the police, a suspect. What she learns is shocking: they’re out of money, and Leon never finished his last novel. Not only that, but he seems to have pissed off some very nasty people.

Luckily, Jane has a support system in her mother and Leon’s family, but when Leon is finally brought out of his coma, the nightmare only intensifies. Leon’s recovery is slow and painful, and Jane is devastated by just how much Leon has hidden from her. I don’t want to say much more, but this book is a corker. Jane is intensely sympathetic, and she must gather all her strength, because Leon’s writer’s block is only the very beginning of their troubles. Daly crafts a powerful, and at times, genuinely creepy, domestic thriller. She also realistically and sympathetically tackles the sometimes-horrifying realities of traumatic brain injury, and there are some genuinely heartbreaking moments between Jane and Leon in the unimaginably difficult aftermath of his injury. This is a superb effort from a fiercely talented author.

Paula Daly is an exciting new author for me. I loved this book and can't wait to read more of her novels.
Jane and Leon are married with two young children. Leon is a relatively popular author whilst Jane is a part time teacher and an aspiring author.
Leon suffers a life changing injury in their driveway and while the police investigate the incident Jane is left devastated and confused as she discovers the secrets he has left in his wake.
Lots of twists and turns before Jane finally learns the truth.
Well work a read i thoroughly enjoyed it.

I really enjoyed this book. It had mystery and suspense and the plot was realistic & unique. I had a hard time liking Leon, but I felt his character was realistic with someone having a traumatic brain injury. Good whodunit, with a surprise ending!