Cover Image: While You Slept

While You Slept

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Member Reviews

Lily and her daughter Maisie wake up one morning in a house that looks like theirs but isn’t. I thought the premise of this book sounded really interesting and different from anything else I’d read. I enjoyed the first half but felt it deteriorated in the second half and I was left feeling disappointed by the ending. It had a lot of potential but for me personally it just didn’t quite live up to it. 4 stars for the first half, 2 stars for the second half.

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EXCERPT: An intruder was standing motionless in Lily Russell's back garden, and when she saw him, she stood from her swivel chair and released an incoherent exclamation.

It was a sunny September lunchtime and the man was stock still in the middle of her small lawn as if waiting for him to see her there. He was wearing jeans and a dark coloured sweat top with the hood pulled over his head.

But it wasn't his presence that alarmed her the most. It was his face. It was tilted up so she could get a good look.

He was wearing the smile of her daughter. A cut-out mask of her five-year-old's laughing features with holes cut out of her eyes for his to look through.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: What would you do if you woke up in your home… but it wasn't your home at all?

When a man wearing a picture mask of her daughter Maisie's face stands tauntingly in her garden, Lily Russell does the smart thing and calls the police. When she and Maisie wake up the following morning in an exact replica of their home, held captive by that same man, the police are no longer an option.

Surrounded by the rooms and things that once provided comfort and now only promote fear, Lily and Maisie must fight to survive. Because when no one knows where you are, you are your only hope.

MY THOUGHTS: While You Slept presents a bit of a conundrum for me. I partly enjoyed this read. There are parts that are downright creepy. There are parts that just don't quite ring true. There are parts that are really suspenseful. There are parts that are faintly ridiculous. And I hated the end, which really wasn't an end at all because we're left in no doubt that there will be a follow on. Sometimes this works for me, sometimes it doesn't, and this didn't.

I didn't like the characters other than Maisie, and there's absolutely no character development. Other than the fact that Lily's husband Ewan is an alcoholic, and they're separated, we know nothing about them.

And I am not at all invested in the motivation behind the abductions. I wasn't convinced....not at all. This aspect of the book is poorly developed and lets down what could have been a 4-star read.

This is one of those books that would probably make a better movie than a book, but the ending would need a lot more definition.

🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️.1

#WhileYouSlept #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: RJ Parker, P.Mgr., MCrim, is an award winning and bestselling true crime author and co-owner with his daughters of RJ Parker Publishing. Inc. He has written 17 true crime books, available in eBook, paperback and audiobook editions, and have sold in over 100 countries. He holds Certifications in Serial Crime and Criminal Profiling.

ALL Paperbacks under RJ Parker Publishing are in the KINDLE MATCHBOOK program: When you purchase any print book, you get the eBook for FREE

Besides gifting books to his cause, Wounded Warriors, and donating to Victims of Violent Crimes, RJ has daily contests on Facebook where he gifts eBooks and autographed books.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Harper Collins UK, One More Chapter, for providing a digital ARC of While You Slept by R.J. Parker for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system, please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

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This book kept me gripped and guessing until the end. It’s so tense and a fantastic page turner! So glad I got to review!

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I really liked this book to begin with but I just didn’t get where it went. The ending seemed quite disjointed and didn’t seem to connect for me.

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This book has kept me on my toes from the very beginning. I raked my brain trying to determine who was doing this to Lily and Maisie and why The answer to those questions? You'll find out at the end. Very intense book to read. I loved everything about this book. I will definitely be looking for more of Parker's books.

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Lily's break up with her husband was not amicable as a result she has become very security conscious. When the app on her phone shows someone in her garden wearing a face mask depicting her five year old daughter, Maisie, she calls the police. Although there is little to be done she feels very nervous. The next morning she wakes up as usual only to discover that although everything looks exactly as it should do this is not their home but an exact replica. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to create this, but who and why?

This was a great start, but sadly for me it did not live up to its promise. I struggled to connect with Lily. Maisie just didn't ring true, she appeared far too mature & the least said about the ending the better! Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

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Lily and her five year old daughter Maisie Russell become embroiled in a nightmare when they wake up one morning and discover they are trapped in an exact replica of their own home.

This story held me captive from the very first chapter with its intensity and fabulous plotline. The succinct and concise chapters helped to ensure that my attention never wavered, even when there wasn't much going on. R.J. Parker's characterisation was well done, both in the creation and development of the cast members. They were believable and credible in their roles, although Maisie did, at times, seem older than her years in her thought processes and mannerisms. With plenty of edge-of-your-seat moments, While You Slept was certainly a creepy read. A really good psychological thriller with a cherry topped, surprising ending that I highly recommend to lovers of the genre.

I'm now off to grab a copy of this talented author's novel, The Dinner Party that I've had on my reading list for some time.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel at my request from HarperCollins/ One More Chapter via NetGalley and this review is my unbiased opinion.

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I'm a big fan of Richard Parker's books and I love that while all his novels have unique plots, he is always able to manipulate our common fears to produce stories which are seriously chilling. An intruder in the house must be one of the most universal things to keep us lying awake at night but that has been twisted here in a unique premise which might require some suspension of belief but the result is a tense, nerve-wracking thriller.
The opening to the book is quietly terrifying; not much actually happens when Lily Russell's sophisticated security system informs her that there is an intruder in her garden. He doesn't do anything other than to look directly at the camera before leaving over the wall but I shared her horror when it is revealed that he is wearing a mask of her five-year-old daughter Maisie's face. The police accept that this is more than an opportune intrusion but are inclined to believe that her estranged husband is the most likely culprit. Lily is far from convinced this is the case but it's not long before the situation becomes considerably more sinister.
Our homes are supposed to be our place of refuge but Lily and Maisie wake up to discover they're in a nightmare. At first glance nothing has changed but then Lily receives a phone call from the man who was in her garden - and now the camera reveals he's in the house too. Except - and this is where While You Slept takes a different turn from the usual home invasion stories - this isn't their home. Somehow they are in a house which is an almost exact copy of their home, although on closer inspection there are little reminders that it is a reproduction and not the real thing.
Far more ominously, however, this version seems to offer no way for Lily and Maisie to leave. As they realise they are trapped, they try to discover the secrets of a house they feel they should know intimately but which has now become their prison. They don't know whether it is safe for them to eat the food provided for them but even more distressingly, their unknown captor is watching their every move and he doesn't hesitate to exact punishments when he is disappointed in their behaviour.
Who this person is, and why Lily and Maisie are in this position isn't revealed until late in the novel and we're not even given much of a chance to get to know them before they are taken. It means that even as we share Lily's frantic theories as to who is responsible for her predicament there are doubts cleverly cast as to her own choices, especially when she considers the events which led to her marriage breaking down, and I developed a few suspicions of my own about what was happening.
As it turns out, I was completely wrong and was totally blindsided by the eventual revelation. Although I suspect some people may feel it comes out of the blue a little too much, I really enjoyed discovering the shocking truth. While You Slept is probably not going to be to everybody's tastes; if you prefer your thrillers to be totally plausible then you may struggle with the premise of the book but if you are prepared to accept the situation as conceivable, this is an intriguing and very creepy story.
Although there are some scenes with other characters, including the mysterious perpetrator, a lot of the novel is effectively a two-header and I loved the relationship between Lily and Maisie. It has to be said that Maisie does seem to be a particularly intelligent five year old but I thought that made Lily's dilemmas about how much to share with her daughter all the more poignant. She is clearly a bright, perceptive child who won't be fobbed off with platitudes and excuses but she is still only very young and there's a moment regarding cereal box toys which serves to underline that. It's just the two of them working together against their unknown and potentially very dangerous kidnapper and I found the dynamics of their relationship to be touching and engaging.
Their plight may be extraordinary but their desperate, horrified responses are entirely relatable and it's this which makes While You Slept such a cracking thriller. Throughout the book I wondered what I would do under the same circumstances and so I was able to experience the sheer weight of their terror. Richard Parker is an author who never fails to deliver and I highly recommend While You Slept to anybody who enjoys original and engrossing psychological suspense novels.

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This book FREAKED me out. It had me thinking how I would handle it if I woke up in a duplicate of my house, but could not escape. I read it late into the night as I couldn't put it down. RJ Parker did a great job of adding twists and turns that you would least expect, which just made it more engaging. Couldn't put it down, and would definitely recommend!

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Thanks Netgalley and the publisher for the advance ecopy.

There was a man in Lily's garden but by the time she could get the cops to he home he was gone. Even worse was that he had a mask on that had her daughter Maisie's face on it. The next day when they wake up they appear to be home but they aren't. They're in a room that is exactly like their home a replica. Fear sets in and now Lily worries no one knows where they are and she needs to fight to survive. A Twisty tense page turning read!

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likes:
- the overall concept of this and the first few chapters were SO creepy. I rarely get scared reading thrillers but this actually spooked me at first.
- definitely high-action and high-anxiety moments, reminiscent of No Exit by Taylor Adams!

dislikes:
- I'm convinced the author has never met a child. Maisie being 5 years old was absolutely ridiculous - the way she spoke and acted was nOTHING like a 5 year old. she would have needed to be at least 11/12 for her character to make sense.
- a lot of the explanations of the building or the action scenes were so confusing and I could not for the life of me picture what was going on.
- the twist is also ridiculous. it's great for a thriller to fool you and not make you able to guess the twist, but the twist and explanation has to actually make sense - this came out of absolutely nowhere and there was no backstory to it.
- the ending??? um

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Oh wow I was all into this story! I was sitting on the side of my bed feeling totally creeped out and wondering how in the heck anybody could have pulled this off and why would they in the first place! I love being creeped out though so this was right up my alley at least for the whole first half of the story then it begins to drag and honestly began to get a bit boring because nothing else was really happening but that ending? What was that? I felt a bit cheated with it. I feel like so much has been left to my imagination and I don't like stories to end like that. I need closure and I don't feel like I got that.

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I’ve read a few books by R.J Parker now and love how his books grab you from the very first page. While You Slept follows that pattern with a brilliant plot idea that I found absolutely shocking! You probably do have to suspend belief a little bit but I very quickly became sucked in by the traumatic events suffered by Lily and her 5 year old daughter Maisie. When Lily opens an app on her phone whilst at work one day, her home camera system shows a strange man in her garden. And if that’s no bad enough, he is wearing a mask made from a photo of her daughters face! How creepy is that?! But on returning home, and having called the police, nothing else seems to have been disturbed and her upstairs neighbour hasn’t seen or heard anything untoward either. But when Lily and Maisie wake up the next morning, they are in an apartment exactly the same as theirs-except that it isn’t! Who could have done this to them and more importantly…WHY?!

What follows is a race against time for Lily to get her and Maisie out of their “very familiar” prison and work out who hates them enough to do this to them! We do meet other characters and look for clues as to any reason they would have to imprison a mother and daughter, especially in such a traumatic way! I do have to say that I thought the perpetrator did come a little out of nowhere so I felt a little cheated by the big reveal but that last page definitely made up for it-what an ending!

While You Slept is a gripping read from start to finish with likeable main characters and a fast paced storyline that will keep you guessing.

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This book had a great premise and for the most part an okay execution. So then why only 1 star?
I was overall hooked to the story, excited to see where it would go and then the ending came, which was an absolute train-wreck. In books the ending takes a very important role in showing how the plot is structured and thought out. And I think in thrillers, where the tension keeps rising up until the final pages, the ending is especially important because it shows if the author actually knows what they're doing. When it comes to this book, when the big reveal came at the end, it just made it seem like the whole plot was structured incredibly poorly with little thought put into it. So to say the ending was underwhelming would be a huge understatement.
I go into the specifics of why I didn't like the ending in the spoiler section in my Goodreads review.

There were more issues with the book, but they're all spoilers, so I just chose to address a couple bigger things in my review. I don't recommend this book to anyone and I don't see myself reading anything else by this author.

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As a thriller this was not very well put together, it read completely disjointed. A backstory would have helped quite a bit. The characters lacked development of any form. There are many twists and turns, some of them making things more confusing. Don't count on an ending that will wrap things up as it's simply not there.

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*4.5 Stars*

Copy kindly received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Enjoyed this one, interesting read and interesting characters. Would recommend.

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Hmmmm. HMMMMM.

This is not a "good book". BUT... is it the biggest page-turner I've read in ages? Yes. For people who watched the ITV drama "The Stranger" – based on the Harlan Coben novel – it's got a similar feel. It's utterly ludicrous and makes a suspension of disbelief almost impossible; it's kind of badly written; and the ending has no satisfaction... but you keep watching, or reading, regardless. Sometimes you just need a page-turner, especially if your brain has been particularly bad at focusing on tasks lately, like mine has.

But let's start at the beginning. Because the first few chapters of this book are genuinely the creepiest thing I (a self-titled wuss) have read in a long time. Lily gets a push notification from her home security app while she's at work – and sees a man standing in her garden... a man who is wearing a mask of her 5 year old daughter's face.

And that hooked me in instantly. The book does not let up on the pace or the tension once throughout, and I went from taking a month to get through my last book to struggling to put this one down. Things happen at breakneck speed, with building paranoia and dread chapter by chapter.

I was willing to give this a higher rating, just for pure ridiculousness, but the ending really let me down. I don't want to spoil things but there's little explanation for the mystery's resolve, the character resolve is entirely too neat and needed a whole load of explanation, and the final line is just flat-out gross.

I'll give it 2.5 stars and round it up to 3 just because it felt good to have a book properly hook me in, despite its flaws.

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I loved the premise of this book.... intrigued to read it. But sadly it’s a not for me.... I just couldn’t put my finger on why.... its just one of those that I got 40% of the way through and my mind was wondering.

Sorry.... am sure others will love it.

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🥳Happy Book Birthday🥳 to While You Slept by R.J. Parker
This book begins with Lucy at work watching a man in a mask of her daughter’s face in her garden. The guy knows Lucy is watching as he looks at the camera and waves. The police find no evidence that anything at the house is amiss. Lucy and her daughter Maisie (who is 5 years old) go to bed as usual. They wake up the next morning in what appears to be their house but IT’S NOT! It’s an exact replica of their home and they are trapped inside.

The creepy factor here was strong, someone watching them all the time but they can’t see them and don’t know who they are. This person brings them food that they’re scared to eat because it’s probably poisoned or drugged. Lucy can’t think of anyone that would do this to them. She doesn’t think she has enemies. Obviously she’s missing something.

I loved that this book started right in with the action! Perfect! The end was also good, and fast paced. However the middle was bogged down with plot lines and information that just didn’t work. I found myself distracted and putting the book down a lot in the middle. Although the end did pick up, the ending didn’t work for me, it was rushed and I don’t think it was believable because so little back story was given to help the reader understand why.

This is a ⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me. Thank you @netgalley and @onemorechapter for an advanced digital copy for my honest review.

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I hate being this person, but this book unfortunately did not stick with me very well. I liked how it started off and maybe about 50 pages in, my attention started to wane. The title alone was why I picked this one from NetGalley, but it just wasn't the book for me. I did manage to finish it, but it's only 2.5 stars.

2.5/5 Stars

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