Wow! Megan Goldin did the thing again! Fans of The Night Swim and The Escape Room, add Stay Awake to your to be read immediately! The story of Liv Reese, a young women who after experiencing a slew of traumatic events, begins to loose her memory in chunks of time. She’s suddenly being tailed for a murder that we knew happened with her in close proximity, but we aren’t sure she committed. We follow her when she story opens, in a cab not having a clue where she is or why she’s there. All Liv sees is her forearm penned with the terms “Stay Awake” “Do not fall asleep” and “Trust no one”
This had me super intrigued from the first page as to what was happening! I loved all the kinds of questions I immediately had!
This book is written in short digestible chapters which is pretty important to me! As well as multiple view points and multiple time periods. I will add, it’s easy to get a bit confused if you’re not fully vested in your reading time being just that- reading time! Take your time and focus on it.
This was a great story, maybe more of a mystery than thriller. As readers, we’re on a journey with Liv so she can piece her life back together. Two thumbs up for Stay Awake!

Megan Goldin follows up her 2020 thriller “The Night Swim” with another carefully plotted, fast-paced story that reminded me a lot of my favorite film, “Memento”. In this case, the person with the questionable memory is Liv Reese, who seems to forget everything in the past two years once she falls asleep. The book has multiple timelines: current day Liv, two years ago Liv, and the current police investigation conducted by detectives Darcy Halliday and Jack LaVelle. Liv has awakened with the message “Stay Awake!” written on her hand (and a bloody knife in her pocket) and the detectives are investigating the murder of unknown stabbing victim with the message “Wake Up!” written in his blood on the window of the crime scene. The mystery revolves around how Liv lost her memory, what happened in the past 2 years, what happened before she last fell asleep, and how are she and the dead man connected.

I was hooked midway and I so wanted two things: “Liv! Just Google yourself!” and “Liv! I like you, don’t become an unreliable narrator!” And I also found myself rooting for the two detectives to solve the mystery. Halliday and LaVelle were also so well developed that they deserve a sequel. What happened? Read it for yourself — you’ll be on the edge of your seat thinking the same things. The multiple times lines are expertly written as they converge in order to reveal the big picture. 5 stars! Congrats to Megan Goldin on another great thriller. Kudos also to the author for understanding the creepiness of performance art.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the preview copy of a terrific thriller.

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): YES Liv, our main character, has a special haircut to bring out the green in her hazel eyes. Otherwise, her cat has pale green eyes.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO In fact, the autumn seasonal changes are what keep reminding Liv that it’s no longer summer.

I couldn’t put this book down!! If you love thrillers, this one will not disappoint with lots of twists and turns that you don’t see coming!! Megan Goldin is quickly becoming an auto-buy author for me!

Holy Crap!! This is an intense, suspense-filled book that truly had me all over the place trying to solve the mystery!
This book alternates between two years in the past and now to the present when Liz Reese is trying to figure out what has happened to her!
She cannot remember how she ended up on a park bench asleep. When she looks for her cell phone to call for help, it is gone, but she sees her hands covered in ink messages and a blood stained knife stuck in her pants pocket. WHAT?
When she tries to find her friends and her roommate, she not only cannot find them, but realizes that there is an awful lot she is missing!
There are people murdered and they say they were friends of Liz's.

This novel takes us on a mystifying journey to learn who this knife belongs to and is Liz a murderer as the police seem to think?
Who did she kill and why can't she recall the crime she is accused of?
It's definitely a fast paced book that you will not want to miss!
Excellent!

Thank you to #StMartin'sPress and to #Netgalley for this ARC, This is my honest review.

This book was crazy! I absolutely loved it as I did Night Swim. I love thrillers and this did not disappoint. Highly recommend to anyone who wants a good book that will keep you up at night-both because you can't put it down and because you can't stop thinking about it! Thank you for opportunity to read this ARC.

Memento meets The Girl on the Train. A twisty roller coaster ride through an amnesiac's mind!

Megan Goldin is one of my favorite new thriller writers, and this killer read solidifies her as a superstar to watch. Our heroine, Liv Reese, wakes up in New York City with writing all over her hands warning her to "Stay Awake." She tries to return home and finds strangers living there. She soon realizes that everything she remembers about her life is gone....oh, and why does she have a bloody knife?

The narration from Liv's perspective then starts to alternate with a dogged female detective, Darcy Holliday, who is solving a crime in which "Stay Awake" was scrawled in blood above the body. Not looking too good for our friend Liv.

One thing I love about Megan Goldin is her ability to master dual timelines, jumping back and forth in time and between different characters, without missing a beat. Sometimes in this genre, there is only one of the two narrators who compels me, but here, I loved both Detective Holliday and Liv.

Disclosure: I was slightly annoyed at the beginning of the book that this seemed awfully similar to Memento, one of my favorite movies - but I need not have worried because the plot and action are totally different and like the central amnesiac, I was soon so caught up in Liv's crazy world that Memento was erased from my mind. I was very impressed with the accuracy and precision of the police work (I'm a former Assistant DA and these things matter to me!) as well as the internal scary monologue of the amnesiac, who, somehow, we know, despite her crazy circumstances, is a good person caught up in something terrible.

There are suspects aplenty here to amuse and trick you, from Liv's sketchy boyfriend to her best friend who seems to be hiding something, to her best friend's rich doctor boyfriend, to a creepy waiter Liv meets by chance.. There was never a moment I wasn't riveted and enthralled by this book. The plot is extremely impressive and the characters are interesting, fun, and sometimes menacing. It is a great combination of psychological thriller and traditional whodunit.

I, personally, will automatically read any and every thriller Megan Goldin writes. They are all fantastic and she just keeps getting better. I hope she writes, fast, because I am ready for another one. A 5 star thriller!

Thanks to St. Martin's, NetGalley, and the author for this book, which I loved!

Liv Reese wakes up in the back seat of a taxi cab with no memory of how she got there. She is dropped off at her apartment but there is a stranger living there and turns her away. She searches for her phone to get some help, but it is missing and instead finds a bloody knife. Then she notices an ominous message all over her hands…it says, “STAY AWAKE”.

What an interesting and suspense filled story! I loved it! It started with a bang and never let up. I literally had to “STAY AWAKE” to finish this one because I was so heavily invested. The writing is top notch and Megan Goldin has become an auto-buy author for me. Certainly a great book to start off the new year with, I can highly recommend STAY AWAKE and it deserves each and every star!

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This review will be posted to my Instagram Blog (@coffee.break.book.reviews) in the near future.

Couldn’t put this one down. I really liked her other work especially Night Swim. This book was probably my 2nd favorite. It was intriguing and kept me on the edge of my seat. I actually felt anxious when reading it for the the characters and their well being. I would recommend.

This story begins, as the synopsis mentions, with our protagonist, Liv, waking up in a cab. She gets home, and soon realizes it’s not her home. She doesn’t have her keys or phone, only a bloody knife, so she buzzes her roommate to let her in. Instead, a strange couple are living there, all of her furnishings and her roommate are gone - even her cat is gone. After the couple threaten to call the police, Liv leaves. Then, she notices her hands - they are covered in ink. There are many things written all the way up her arms, mostly warnings, with the largest one reading “STAY AWAKE”.

I debated for a long time about if telling any more than would be a spoiler. I’m going to keep the rest under wraps, except for one thing: this happens every time Liv wakes up (the bloody knife was a one-off). She is always confused as to where she is, what day it is, and why the only thing she can remember before falling asleep is answering her phone at work. It’s kind of like the movie Groundhog Day, except not. (You’ll get it once you read it - and trust me, you’ll want to read this one!) I debated on my rating for this, too, so I’m going with what I liked and didn’t.

Pros:
1. This book was a total page-turner that I would have finished in one sitting, had I not started it so late at night!
2. This book is super original, and a breath of fresh air from formulaic thrillers. It’s very suspenseful and the beginning draws you right in.
3. This book bounces back and forth a lot, but it never got convoluted or messy. The writing flowed really well.
4. I freaking loved it.

Cons:
1. The explanation for all of this happening is a bit far-fetched, and you may have to suspend reality a little bit. Just go with it though, because the ending is great.

Four pros and only one con equal a four-star rating, but that’s a really minor con. So maybe 4.5 stars? Nah .. I’m going to bump it up to five stars because I’m feeling generous and like I said, I loved it! I predict this will be huge when it’s published this summer, and it would make a great movie or miniseries, so that development wouldn’t surprise me either. This was just a fantastic, crazy, suspenseful story.

(Thank you to St. Martin’s Press, Megan Goldin, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.)

Megan Goldin’s Stay Awake is a suspense-filled, well-written mystery with some structural challenges that unfortunately weaken the integrity of the entire novel.

Goldin introduces the reader to the main character, Liv: a woman with a debilitating ailment. When Liv falls asleep, with her consciousness goes her memory. As a result, her angst-filled waking hours are laden with confusion, frustration and fear. One moment she is a successful writer for a vogue magazine; the next she is alone, living a life that is almost recreated daily. To support Liv, Goldin has created friends, social workers, love-interests and colleagues, each of whom knows only a small portion of Liv’s full reality. The exception is Ted, an intimate partner whose drive to protect Liv is both noble and romantic. While the range of individual differentiation is admirable, each character is considerably underdeveloped with just not enough detail or background to make them come alive. For this reader, although the plot was brilliant, the characters remained flat on the page, never fully engaging me in their experiences.

The second point of contention here was Goldin’s choice of structure. The timeline is all over the place, moving from past to present in both years and hours. It’s disconcerting and confusing, which, while a reflection of Liv’s mindset, caused me to have to continually flip back and forth to reread chapter headings in order to ascertain date and time.

What I will give Goldin credit for is her incredible ability to build tension in her writing. In this, she is positively brilliant. One scene in the story takes Liv to an “art exhibition” that is so macabre in its presentation that it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The level of detail and the choice of which details were chosen to share relative to the exhibit was nothing short of genius, and, in my opinion, the strength of the book as a whole. Add to this a psychological element that will definitely have a physical effect on the reader.

Overall, I did inhale the pages and revel in the mood and tone Goldin so skillfully wrote into being. For that reason alone, this rates a solid 3. I anxiously await her next story!

I would like to thank St. Martin’s Press and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

As the biggest Megan Goldin fan, I can truly say that her thrillers never disappoint. Goldin writes perfectly paced, heart-racing novels that keep you turning the page until 2am. "Stay Awake" is no different. I spent a whole day straight entranced in these pages searching for answers side by side with Liv. Pre-order it TODAY.

I was excited to read an advanced copy of this! I have to admit that I was having a hard time suspending belief for the first part of the book as the idea seemed very far-fetched. However, the author did tie it back together in a way that made it more believable. It was a good story that kept me turning the pages as I needed to find out what happened! I thought there were a few loose ends that never got explained, but overall it was good!

Loved this creepy thriller! The plot slowly and flawlessly unwinds. With POVs of past and present the storyline literally just flows. Crazy talented Megan Goldin! What a delivery. This book grabbed me from the very beginning and never let go. Highly recommend!
Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book

Wow! Thanks NetGalley, thank you to the author and publisher for the chance to read this book early! Just when I thought I had it all figured out boom this book did a 180! I did not expect that all all!! Great book! Definitely kept me up late many nights because I could not put it down!

Another hit by Goldin!

Liv Reese wakes up, over and over again, not knowing what's going on and realizing she doesn't remember anything that's happened for a little over the past two years. Her apartment isn't hers, she looks different, she can't find her friends, her boyfriend and more alarmingly, she has a bloody knife on her and she doesn't know where it has come from. Darcy Halliday is a detective trying to break into the homicide unit. One morning she gets a call to investigate a murder scene, a man has been murdered and oddly, there's a message in blood on the window, "Stay Awake". Darcy is committed to solving the case, and how it involves Liv Reese.

This was a great story! Different and interesting I was excited to read it. I would say it's between a 4 and 4.5 I have some notes though, the writing is amazing as always, characters are well developed and I felt that I knew them. However, it hard for me to grasp that everything happening in the present time in the story happens over one day. It was just so much! I could not figure out the big twist, I figured out a smaller one along the way, I don't know how Liv didn't but in the end I thought the twist and reveal was well done. However, the re-direction to other suspects along the way was a bit confusing to me. I just didn't see the point in all of it, I don't think it fit the best into the story. At the end I think the story wrapped up way too quickly. I wanted to know the motivation behind everything that happened on a deeper level, how did those other tiny characters contribute to the bigger event. Also, if I were Liv, I would be so terrified I would go to a hospital and never leave. Obviously that wouldn't be great for the story but I found it a tiny bit unbelievable. All in all, great story! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the free preview in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this thriller built around dissociative fugue. It was fast paced, and kept me interested. I would recommend to those who need a good book to curl up with at home.

I’m a HUGE Megan Goldin fan - to the point where she’s an auto-buy author for me. So I was very pleased to receive an e-ARC copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher.

The book opens with Liv Reese waking up in a cab - and having no idea why she’s there or where she has been previously. When she arrives at her apartment, she discovers that her roommate has left, her cat was brought to a shelter, and the people living in her apartment have no idea who she is. After being kicked out, she discovers a knife wrapped in a t-shirt covered with blood. With that beginning, how could this book not be interesting! As the story unwinds, it’s learned that Liv has an odd memory disorder - so when she sleeps, she forgets everything that has currently happened, but upon waking believes that it’s two years previously (in fact, this book has two timelines - one two years previously and one in the present). At times this book felt like the movie Groundhog Day (and Ms. Goldin does repeat some information multiple times as if the reader’s forgotten), but with an additional character - Detective Darcy Halliday - who is trying to puzzle out what is happening, it all manages to work smoothly together. Yes, there are some plot holes and unanswered questions, but if you can skip over those (or try to ignore them), this is a very enjoyable and fast thriller/mystery read. I found the pacing to be a bit like a roller coaster - fast “shoot the sheriff in the first paragraph” opening to engage the reader, then a bit of a slow ride (to build up some suspense), then back to a fast action puzzle piecing section, then a bit of some interesting curves, and a final part where you take a breath - it’s over but wow was it a fun ride. I eagerly look forward to Ms. Goldin’s next book. A very very solid 4.5 stars from me.

Wow! Memento meets thriller version of fifty first dates and Before I go to sleep!

This book is outstanding, heart throbbing, mind bending, twisty, wildest, action packed, full throttle ride you may ever get! I love it so much! I cancel everything in my life to focus on it! Because it’s so addictive! Once you start to read, you can not put it down! You are drawn into story by its high tension mystery building, exciting, twisty chapters, biting your nails, squirming in your seat, trying to read faster for finding out what’s gonna happen next.

The increasing tension leaves you breathless. You feel like your marathon runner but instead of using your legs, you use your eyes to finish faster.

Here is a brief summary of the plot:

Our heroine Liv Reese wakes up in a cab, without having any idea when she climbed in, dizzy, confused, heading to her home.

When she reaches to her apartment, she finds out her roommate might be moved away, her cat is gone, strangers live in her place. When she checks her pockets to find her phone, she finds a knife wrapped up in a shirt covered in blood! And her hands covered with writings tell her: “ Stay awake”! What the actual hell!

Then she visits her work place, checking the exact day and year: it seems like she’s missed last two years from her life! But why she cannot remember anything? Why people act like so careful around her as if she may get broken into pieces at any second?

Liv has a special disorder: Her last memory was working at her desk in her office in New York. She remembered answering her phone and then NOTHING! Everything is a full blank! And what's more, whatever new memories she'd formed when she was awake disappeared once she went to sleep, and the whole process started all over again. She turns into Memento man each time she closes her eyes!

And now she might be a killer : she catches a glimpse of local news: seeing a brutal crime scene where the victim’s blood is used to scrawl a message across the window: the very same message that’s inked on her hands: WAKE UP!
Well: the book was smart, agitating, unputdownable.

I loved Liv! I also loved Darcy Halliday, veteran, joined the forces of NYPD, a badass, bold, intelligent homicide detective. It seem like we’re gonna see her more on the upcoming books of the author!

Even though there are still plot holes and unanswerable questions about some suspects and murderer’s motives, I’m still rounding up 4.5 stars 5 blazing, exciting, riveting page turner stars!

Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for making a copy of this book available to read in exchange for a review through NetGalley.

Megan Goldin's newest title, Stay Awake, sets up a premise for a great read: Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a cab with no memory at all of how she got there. But there are signs of something troubling, in the form of a bloody knife in her pocket and scribbles of STAY AWAKE! written all over her skin.

Two years ago, Liv Reese was living the perfect life--she's a writer for a trendy culture magazine and is dating the successful Marco. But she wakes up one morning disoriented, her memories gone. Things get worse when she turns on the news and sees the story of a shocking murder--with the words STAY AWAKE! written in blood on the victim's window.

Liv knows she's somehow connected to this crime, but that's about it. And the person with all the answers is out there--and will do anything to make sure Liv stays silent...

Ok, let me start with the positives. This is a interesting premise and a quick read. I've read several books where amnesia/memory problems play the starring role and I've enjoyed them--I think because the terror of not being able to remember your life is a compelling plotline.

But Stay Awake is not one of those books.

For starters, the writing here is...not good. The prose is so repetitive (including words used multiple times in a single paragraph) that it makes reading frustrating, and because the writing doesn't flow incredibly well, it makes the timeline shifts in each chapter hard to follow. The POV of the detectives isn't terrible, but Liv's is cringey. Dialogue and inner monologue feels stilted and unnatural. In truth, I would have DNF'ed this had I not been reading it to review and been invested in finding out what the twist was at least.

The most generous thing I can say about Liv as a main character is that if anyone was truly interested in her safety, they should have had her hospitalized. She was in no state to be wandering around by herself. Other books that portray amnesia do not feature a woman who acts so incredibly stupid. I mean, honestly. She knows something's wrong (because we're beat over the head with "I don't remember this person, I don't remember this life, I don't remember anything"), and yet, every time someone points out "gee, Liv, we're worried about you," her response is "oh gosh, whatever do you mean?" By the end of this book, I either wanted the killer to put her out of her misery (if the killer wasn't her) or have someone involuntarily commit her to whatever hospital was closest to her.

I do appreciate the opportunity to read this, but it just didn't work for me. And as it's currently written I wouldn't recommend it either.

When Liv Reese wakes up, she cannot remember anything from the past two years. Confused and panicked, she finds a bloody knife in her hands, which are covered with phrases written in pen. The local news shows that a man has been murdered and on his window the words "WAKE UP" are smeared in blood. Liv realizes she has seen this phrase before.... on her own hands. Without any recent memories to go off of, Liv tries to put together what is happening to her and why she is now on the run for a crime she doesn't remember.

Megan Goldin does a great job of putting together a thriller that will keep you hooked. Told from different perspectives and timelines, you will put together an intricate story while trying to get to the bottom of a complex mystery. The characters were well developed and believable. Some critiques I had were that some of the twists were repetitive and the ending was a bit predictable. Even so, this was a fun read that, if this is something you're interested in, you should give a shot. I could see this being a successful movie in the future!