Oh boy!! This is such a twisted, frightening psychological thriller and a total nightmare scenario!

Whilst at work Lily Russell's home security cameras show a strange man in her back garden but what is worse is that he's wearing a mask, a mask showing the face of her daughter, Maisie. The police investigate but the man has disappeared by the time they get there. Lily carefully locks up and switches on the security alarms before going to bed but when she awakes the next day she senses something is wrong. It is, very wrong. She's in a duplicate of her home, everything she had there is in this replica but she's trapped in there with Maisie and with no way out.......

Talk about edge of your seat stories - this is such a scary scenario, so twisted, perfectly designed to keep you guessing and with an ending that has frightening implications . . . after all, if you're drugged, you really don't know what happens whilst you slept . . . .

I requested and was gifted a copy of this book and this is my honest review after reading it.

Waking up in a place that looks exactly like your home, but isn’t your home must be pretty scary.
Lily and her daughter find themselves in this situation and soon realise the only thing the other side of the front door is a dead end.
They’re being watched and listened to and can’t escape their kidnapper.
The idea is a great one but I couldn’t see where the story was going as they would either escape or they wouldn’t....
The revealing of the kidnapper was good but from there, it just kind of went a bit off kilter.
The ending just kind of happens with no lead up to it and even the explanation of why they were kidnapped seemed a bit of a stretch of the imagination.
This is a good read but a bit too unbelievable for me.
Thanks to Harper Collins UK, One More Chapter and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Having not read anything by R J Parker I was suitably impressed that While You Slept gets off to a fairly explosive start, dropping the reader right into the middle of the action.
Single mum Lily is at work when an app on her phone alerts her to an intruder in her garden. Rather chillingly this person is wearing a mask depicting the face of her five year old daughter Maisie. Immediately I found this creepy whilst being intrigued as to why Lily feels the need for such clever technology, thinking the storyline was going to be sufficiently scary enough to make me sleep with the lights on! The only obvious culprit is Lily’s estranged husband Ewan but she’s adamant it isn’t him. After a brief police visit to determine the property is safe, Lily and Maisie spend their evening at home in the company of Paulette, Lily’s sister. Expecting Lily to suffer from a sleepless night I was surprised when the next morning rolls around without any drama. However, the most bizarre thing has occurred. Lily and Maisie have woken up in a house identical to theirs with all their possessions etc, except it is a replica and not their real home. How on earth has this happened? Have they been drugged? Why would someone go to such lengths to kidnap them?

Initial thoughts made me question the plausibility of such an event. If this is somehow connected to the intruder in the garden then there must be a strong motive for carrying out such an audacious operation. At this point I didn’t feel I knew enough about Lily’s background to hazard a guess at what forces were in play here, apart from knowing vaguely that Ewan was an alcoholic and had behaved erratically, unintentionally hurting their daughter and thereby causing the break up of their marriage. With seemingly no means of escape and no phone signal,Lily and Maisie are trapped and at the mercy of their kidnapper(s).

I was looking forward to perhaps learning more about Lily and her past, imagining there to be some long buried secret that could explain the current situation she finds herself in. Part of the appeal and fun of reading a psychological thriller is trying to spot the important clues amidst the red herrings, second guessing the author’s intentions and feeling incredibly smug when you do! This kind of drip feeding of information is crucial to build and maintain tension but with no potential clues I was completely in the dark. Frustrated at the lack of any backstory, with Lily’s character sketchily drawn, another major stumbling block in the narrative is the voice of five year old Maisie. Unfortunately it is pitched way beyond what I would consider the dialogue of a child this age to be. I had to keep reminding myself Lily and Maisie were mother and young daughter rather than a mother and at least a teenage daughter.

With no clues regarding possible motive or indeed culprit, I found it hard to engage fully with the storyline even though I was racing through the pages. I think I hoped that the next page would prove enlightening but I was sorely disappointed. Being hopefully of at least average intelligence and a voracious reader of books in this genre, I struggled to picture in my minds eye the layout and location of this replica house which made any potential escape route hard to visualise. There seemed to be very little build up to the strange and confusing denouement and where Ewan suddenly appears from is a mystery. I actually thought there was a section missing from the narrative because I was so bewildered. I even went right back to the beginning, convinced I’d missed a vital clue only to realise a vague sentence alluded to the reasons behind Lily and Maisie’s kidnap. But it is vague in the extreme and impossible to detect.

It isn’t very often that I’m inclined to give a poor review but sadly on this occasion the execution of the plot didn’t live up to my initial expectation. Plausibility is essential for me to really enjoy a book of this nature and disappointingly it is severely lacking here. To suddenly foist motive and culprit(s) on the reader in the eleventh hour without creating a well developed backstory makes the ending feel rushed, like a bolt out of the blue. However, as always I’m very appreciative of the opportunity to read this ARC courtesy of the publisher and Netgalley.

So you wake up one morning in your bed but it’s not your bed and it’s not your house… what do you do? That’s right, ring the police… but your phone won’t ring out…. what a living nightmare!!!

Lily is a good person, who would take her and her young daughter in the middle of the night and hold them hostage in a replica house. Everything even down to the books on her bookshelves is identical… the only difference is there is no way out. But someone is watching them, taunting her. But why??! Is this her spiteful ex playing games? How far would this twisted individual go in this torment?

The mind games the captor plays are evil. Lily knows he can get to them at any time, he can ring her but she can’t ring him. He can deliver what they need, he can come and go whilst they’re asleep. That would seriously freak me out. This level of control is scary especially if you don’t know the why!!!

This is one seriously fast paced read. As I devoured two thirds of the book in an evening, I lost all track of the time of the story. How long had Lily and Maisie been kept captive? I really enjoyed Parker’s previous novel The Dinner Party but While You Slept grabbed me by the jugular and held me captive with Lily. If you like your tense psychological thrillers, I highly recommend you give While You Slept a read.

There is a man in Lily's garden. He's wearing a mask ... a picture of her 5-year-old daughter. Lily does the right thing and calls the police, but the intruder is gone by the time they get there.

The next morning mother and daughter wake up as usual .... only there's nothing usual now. They are in a room .. completely decorated to look like their home...but it isn't. The man from the garden has somehow taken them from their home and installed them in a replica. Lily doesn't know where they are ... how long will they be there ... is anyone looking for them?

There is a certain creepiness factor .... knowing that someone is always watching ... bringing you food, but you wonder if it's drugged .... The panic they feel is palpable. Why would someone do this to them ... she has no enemies and her daughter is still a young child.

It's a complex plot amid what seems like many interconnected parts. A backstory would have helped tremendously. The characters lack complete development. There are many twists and turns, some of them make no sense at all with some glue to hold them together. The ending seemed abrupt ... and again, made no sense.

As a thriller, this one just didn't do it for me.

Many thanks to the author / Harper Collins UK / One More Chapter / Netgalley for the digital copy of WHILE YOU SLEPT. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

Not having read anything by this author before I wasn’t sure what to expect. A chilling psychological thriller with a very interesting concept. Twists and turns aplenty which kept me guessing throughout. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I was really intrigued by this book mostly because it reminded me of the part of the TV show Pretty Little Liars where the main characters were locked in a bunker that was essentially a replica of each of their bedrooms. I thought those scenes were really unique and I thought a book with the same concept would be great.
Lily and her 5 year old daughter Maisie are drugged and wake up in a perfect replica of their own home, complete with copies of all their belongings. The doors are locked and a mysterious man tells Lily over the phone that they won’t be harmed if they cooperate, but they must stay in the house and not try to escape or alert others to their presence.
I really wanted to enjoy this book, and I will admit it was compulsively readable; you’re given no clue as to who might have done this to Lily and her daughter, and most of my motivation for finishing the book was to figure out who kidnapped them and why.
However, much of the book was dialogue between Lily and Maisie with very few dialogue tags, so it was difficult to tell who was speaking. That was also made more difficult by the fact that Maisie was unrealistically well spoken for a five year old. Based on my (admittedly limited) experience with five year olds, I don’t think that the average kindergartener would be able to speak as well as Maisie did.
Other than that, there was very little action in the book until the end, and while I liked the reveal of why Lily and Maisie were kidnapped, there were absolutely no clues throughout the book, so I wasn’t even able to form ideas about who it might have been.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

For Lily and her five year old daughter, Maisie it was just like any other evening. They went to bed only to wake up in a nightmare. The house is identical to their own and nothing is out of place, but they can't leave. The house is a replica. Their stalker has taken them while they slept. Lily is still getting over her divorce and Maisie misses her dad.

There's a lot of mystery surrounding this action packed read. The pace is steady. It did get a bit repetitive around the half way mark. There's an element of creepiness about this story. Maisie came across as a lot older than just five years old. I did feel the ending was a bit rushed and that there were gaps left in the story that needed filling. There's plenty of twists in this page turning read.

I would like to thank NetGalley, HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter and the author R.J. Parker for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley and One More Chapter for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

What would you do if you woke up in your home... But it wasn't your home? In "While You Slept" by R. J. Parker, Lily Russell is panicked when she sees a man in her backyard wearing a mask with her daughter's face on it. She calls the cops, but the next morning she and her daughter, Maisie, wake up in an exact replica of their home, but with one change: there's no way out. What will Lily have to do to keep her daughter alive?

Ugh, there is nothing more terrifying than a thriller that's main premise is protecting a child from harm. These are the kind of themes that keep me up at night. "While You Slept" definitely had a Criminal Minds kind of vibe that made it hard to put down, but it flew by a little too quickly.

Parker's characters have just enough detail that I quickly grew attached to them. Lily being protective of her child. Maisie being torn up about her parents divorce, making her quiet, but also clingy to her mom. Ewin becomes likable in the end, even. 

One critique I have is that the ending seemed to come out of nowhere. I didn't get how the connection to the kidnapper would come and while the explanation made sense I would have liked some kind of hinting of what the connection would be. If I would have had more of a backstory on Lily, then the kidnapper clue could have been added and it would have increased the length of the book, making it a little more fulfilling.

I gave this book three stars because it was a little too short and the ending seemed too random without any hinting. I enjoyed this book and it was great for a quick read, but I tend to like a little more length and suspense to my thrillers.

Though I like a story to start with a bang and keep me reading, the attempt to do that with this book just didn’t work for me.

Yes, it started out with a bang. But there was a problem. I didn’t know the characters. And I didn’t feel any empathy toward what was happening. Plus, the attempt to cause tension and excitement needed to take a step back. I needed a story and some background to cause me to care.

As I said, the story jumped right into tension and excitement, but I felt there were problems.

A) What was happening felt vague and confusing.
B) How long can you attempt to keep the tension high? It felt like it was written to be a thriller, but without cluing the audience on enough.
C) You really could read it without suspending all disbelief.

I found myself skimming the pages and gleening the highlights rather than savoring the excitement and emotions that should have accompanied it.

Unfortunately, when the rabbit sprung out of the hat during the last fit few pages, I literally had to shake my head. No warning. No hints. No way to have guessed or anticipated the conclusion. And . . . the last sentence, well, it really confirmed that this book just wasn’t for me.

You will probably enjoy this book if you’re able to suspend disbelief and can engage in a story without much connection to characters.

My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the ARC and the ability to review it and share my opinion.

To wake up in your home that isn't really your home? Terrifying! To realize you're trapped there by someone you're sure you've never met? Debilitating.

Life is hard enough with the fears you face when you have children, but when the face of your child appears in your garden as a mask for a full grown man, it becomes utterly unbearable.

That is exactly what happened to Lily and Maisie. Who is behind this heinousness and why? Lily starts trying to figure out who she may have wronged that could be so cruel. How does someone even have the means to recreate an entire home and have no exit?

This story was gripping and thrilling. I had to keep reading to figure out what was going to happen next and who had taken them.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

The story is about a woman called Lily and her young daughter Maisie. Lily is separated from Maisie’s father, Ewan. Lily has new CCTV installed, which includes motion sensors that trigger a notification to her mobile when it’s been activated. Lily is at work one afternoon and her garden motion detector is triggered. On the screen is a man in the garden wearing a mask featuring her daughter, lily rushes and collects Maisie from school, and goes home with the police. The police check the house out, and it’s fine, and her sister pops round to keep her company.

The next morning Lily and Maisie wake up and, after a few minutes realises she isn’t in fact in her own home, but a complete full replica of her home, situated in a derelict area. Lily needs to find out why she is there, and who is behind it.

The characters in the book were great, although Lily’s extended family (mother/father) weren’t focused on too much, which is a shame, as it would have helped impact the story more. The book was fast paced, and had a good storyline, but there was something missing from the story. I just felt it was a bit unbelievable, especially in this day and age. The ending had a slight twist I wasn’t expecting, but I felt the story could have had much more of a punch if the story was tightened on it, and made it more genuine.

Overall I liked it.

Yeah. Lily and her five year old daughter wake up one morning and find themselves imprisoned in a house that's exactly like theirs- down to everything- except it's not. It's not their house at all. How did they get there? Who is doing this and why? And how on earth did that person do it? Lots of questions, all of which will be answered, somewhat, to my mind, unsatisfactorily but that's the way of many thrillers. My quibble with this (once I accepted how implausible it was) was that Maisie, a five year old, conveys as much older. Not a bad thing but she would have been better written as an older kid. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It is a diverting page turner.

This book is a winner. A mother and a daughter being watched by a sinister figure the next day they wake up at home created to look like their home and being watched by the same person. How do they escape? I highly recommend this thriller.

The premise of this one immediately caught my attention - a woman wakes up in a replica of her own home, along with her young daughter, but they can't leave and it's obviously not their real home.... And though it opens up engagingly (and creepily enough), the writing style throughout the whole book feels oddly convoluted. The action is garbled, with very little time spent on character development. Lily asks quite a bit from her five-year-old daughter, too, which adds to the overall unbelievable quality of the book. Time jumps abruptly, too, and the final climax is so jumbled and rushed that leaves the whole book feeling unsatisfying. The final motivation leaves a lot of more practical questions in its wake, only adding to the implausible reasoning behind their capture. None of it seems plausible and so many gaps are left at the end, that I wonder if perhaps the review copy is unfinished... The ending especially only added to my dissatisfaction. I had hoped that it would improve, but at least it was a quick read... I did finish it, but in retrospect, I wish that I had set this one aside earlier.

What the heck? Can you even imagine going to bed and then waking up the next morning to find out that you are in a complete duplicate of your home and being held prisoner? Of course not! Thankfully! But that is what happens here. Lily is trying to keep them safe, figure a way out, and help her daughter Maisie safe all while trying to figure out who has kidnapped them and why. It makes for a solid rollercoaster of a read! I do wish there had been a bit more background that would support the end. That seemed to come out of left field. Also, I kept forgetting Maisie was only 5. She acted way to mature for someone so young, whether in a stressful situation or not. But, these did not keep me from enjoying the story!

::Sigh::
I'm really torn on how I feel about this one...I read the blurb and was super jazzed about reading this book.
Imagine being at work and getting a motion alert on your backyard camera to find that there's a man standing there wearing a mask with your daughter's face on it?!? Fast forward to the next day and you wake up in what you think is your house, but is strictly a clever replica.....CREEPY! Who imprisoned you and your 5 year old daughter?!? And why?!? Was it your ex-husband who has a history of alcohol abuse and anger issues? Or someone else?

I was loving the first 80 pages or so, but things started to become repetitive. I also could not wrap my head around Maisie, who is supposedly only 5, but is supremely intelligent and very in tune to social cues...I'm not a parent, so I can't guess what age would have been better suited, but I feel like it would have been written better as a teenager. The action sequences were a bit rushed and jumbled and the big reveal was a let down for me. I feel with some minor tweaking this could be the next blockbuster movie!

A special thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins UK/One More Chapter, and R.J. Parker for providing me with an ARC>

What would you do if you woke up in your home, but it as not your home? Literally a replica of your home with no doors and no way out. You are a caprice, with your child, but who took you? You have your ideas... I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The concept of this book was very good! I was creeped out just from reading the synopsis - can you imagine waking up in a place that looks EXACTLY like yours and then realizing it's not? Like the WORK someone had to put in to make their prison the EXACT same as their house was mind-blowing. I appreciated the small details like their cat and the same kind of tools in the drawer - it was all the same, but just a little off, similar to coming home and seeing your couch moved two inches to the left.

I also really liked the pace of this book. I was able to read it in one sitting because I felt like I was going to miss something if I put it down. It moved quickly, but not too quickly. Parker did a great job of making long periods of time for the characters pass quickly and didn't try to draw those out with unnecessary details which I appreciated.

I did feel like while the plot had GREAT potential, it fell super short and felt too out there. The ending just left me saying, "what?" in complete confusion. The revealing of the initial kidnapper was a really good twist that I didn't see coming, but from there, it just kind of went haywire and ended up falling incredibly flat. The ending we got needed some sort of lead up that wasn't there, so it seemed to come out of nowhere and make no sense at all.

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.

I was really intrigued by the concept of this book and was excited to read it.
The first 100 pages really packed a punch and was super creepy but after that the book just fell flat.
The ending just seemed to come out of nowhere and felt rushed and it is not really explained who the mystery man was.
So many unanswered questions with this book that left me wanting more.