This book intrigues you from the beginning. Liv Reese wakes up in a taxi and has no memory of how she got there. The last thing she remembers is being at work answering the phone on a warm summer day. She gets out at her brownstone and hopes that Amy is there to let her in as she realizes she has no keys, purse or cell phone. She gets an answer from the apartment only to discover that someone else is living there. She leaves the brownstone only to discover in her pocket is a t-shirt wrapped around knife she puts this in garbage can. She notices she has wrote messages on her hands:STAY AWAKE.

She sees on the news that someone is murdered and wonders if this can somehow be related to her? Why can't she remember anything from the past two years? She keeps trying to get ahold of Amy hoping she will be able to explain what's happened. She becomes a person of interest in the murder and is trying to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together to unlock her past and move forward. This is a fast paced thriller that was hard to put down.

Thank you NetGalley for ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Halliday and Lavelle reminded me so much of Benson and Stabler that I had to simultaneously read Stay Awake while watching episodes of SVU. I loved this book. It was like reading a movie…or…reading an episode of SVU lol. I really hope Goldin writes more with this pair of detectives, because I am hooked. This was such an awesome and unique thriller.

Having read two of the author's previous books, I was eagerly looking forward to this one, and she did not disappoint. Liv Reeves wakes up in the back of a cab having no idea where she is, she is carrying a bloodied knife wrapped in a sweater and notices writing on her hands, Stay Awake, Trust No One. She eventually ends up at her apartment she shares with Amy, a doctor, only to find out a couple are living there and have no idea who she is. Liv also notices that it's fall, she remembers taking a call at work in bright sunshine and thought it had been around early summer. We learn through alternative points of view that Liv had been dating Marco, an entrepreneur. Liv also receives calls from someone asking where she is and wanting the knife back. There is a news article that describes the killing of a man where the words Stay Awake were written in blood on a window in the apartment. Liv starts to think she might have had something to do with it but has no memory of it. Two detectives investigate the murder and quickly determine their main suspect is Liv. There is a lot of back and forth between the timelines, but I did not find it hard to keep track of the story lines. Liv is a very resourceful person and although I had an inkling of who the bad person was, the ending was very satisfying. I would highly recommend. Thank you to #Netgalley and #St Martin's for the ARC.

This was a FUN ride!

I've read all of Goldin's works and while I really liked Night Swim, I didn't love it the way most people did. It was good, a solid read and enjoyable, but I preferred The Escape Room and really held out hope Stay Awake would be another home run. It was.

This was such a fun and wild ride. Goldin has a way of getting her hooks deep into you and nothing else matters. Chores? Cleaning? Adulting? Forget it. You're into the book and you're not putting it down until its finished! I read this in ONE DAY! I started it on our flight home and got to 52% in 2.5 hours. I couldn't stop. Then when we got home, I rushed through dinner so I could pick it back up and finished it before bedtime.

While I had a hunch who the bad guy was, I 100% talked myself out of it multiple times and talked myself into someone else. I was convinced I knew who it was and that is always a sign of a great story teller - if you can convince yourself based on their own words who it is then change your mind over and over and become more confused!

The pacing of this book was phenomenal - the story was fresh and I was thoroughly creeped out, in the best way possible.

I think this is my favorite Goldin work to date! I'm just sad I read it so early in the year - but mark your calendars, this gem drops August 9, 2022 and WILL be a buzzed about book!

Liv has a form of amnesia caused by a personal tragedy in which each time she falls asleep, she cannot remember anything since the tragedy happened. Each time she wakes she is confused, but reads clues she writes on her hands to try to discover what happened to her. She soon learns she is wanted for the murder of her boyfriend and roommate, one she cannot remember committing.

There was not a build up of suspense and a wow moment, but simply a well written storyline that keeps you reading well into the night to find out what really happened and who did it.

Megan Goldin has her finger firmly on the pulse-point of suspense. STAY AWAKE delivers her trademark signature of unrelenting tension, intriguing characterizations, and whiplash pacing. Don't expect to sleep if you pick this up at night....

Had me on edge of my seat and kept me guessing throughout book .....great story line and character development. Enjoyed this book and hope to read more by this author!

Wow this thriller had me on the edge of my seat the whole time! Liv wakes up with no memory of the last two years, words scrawled on her hands, and a bloody knife in her pocket; and every time she goes to sleep she starts all over again. Trying to regain her memory, and trying to survive as the killer who tried to murder her two years ago is hunting her down again, it’s a race against time to see if she can figure out whats going on before she falls asleep

Another amazing read by Megan Goldin! She has a way of writing that really keeps the tension growing and growing! You don’t know exactly what is taking place throughout the book, but the desperate need to find out really keeps you flipping pages like crazy! Fast paced, unputdownable, and mind blowing good! One of those twisty, chilling tales that’s sure to give you a hangover from heck! Highly, highly recommend this amazingly written, thrill ride!

Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi, having no recollection as to how she arrived there.

The pacing of Stay Awake – the third book by Megan Goldin – is exactly what I’m looking for in a thriller. After the first third of the story, I couldn’t put it down until the end. The style is very approachable, and it’s very easy to become drawn in and immersed.

By way of downsides, I only have a few very minor things to call out. The detectives were (I think) unintentionally hilarious to me at times. While thinking about the complexity of the murder case: “Halliday knew a thing or two about puzzles.” And then it goes on to talk about how she’s done jigsaw puzzles before. If you’ve also done jigsaw puzzles, I’ve got good news about your qualifications to be a homicide detective. There are also some small details that stuck with me for the whole story, like how long has it been since Liv took a shower if she’s still covered in ballpoint?

Overall I quite enjoyed this. I think it will be very popular when it hits the stands in August of 2022. So page-turning and easy to get sucked into, I think sometimes readers need a palate cleanser like that in between the slow burns.

Thank you to Netgalley and St.Martin's for a copy of the eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Liv is confused, she doesn't know where is she or what is going on. When she returns to her apartment she is shocked to find new people living there and clearly have been there for awhile. All she knows is that she leaves messages for herself on her arms and hands. Stay Awake, Wake Up, Don't trust anyone.

Everytime she fall asleep she can't remember anything. But she knows someone is coming for her, if only she can figure it out before he catches her.

Usually I would say a lot more, but I am being vague because there is so much going on and this one is better if you read it and unfold it one layer at a time. I had no clue what I was getting into when I started this. Soon I couldn't even put it down. I had to know what was going with Liv, what had happened to her and what was happening to her now.

There were so many things unveiled piece by piece in this book. It added to the suspense and hooks you with each one!

If you are looking for a face paced thriller that holds its secrets until the end, Stay Awake is for you!

Liv Reese wakes up in a cab in the middle of the night with a bloody knife, no phone or purse, and “STAY AWAKE!” written on her hand with no memory of how she got there. Liv tries to piece together what has happened in the last two years of her life but is constantly fighting against her memory resetting every time she falls asleep.

Stay Awake is an intense thriller told from different timelines and perspectives that help to fill in gaps and pace out the story in a way that kept me engaged and interested the whole time.

This is my fourth Megan Goldin book, and she didn’t disappoint! When Liz remembers waking up next to a dead man, she can’t recall what happened. Whenever she falls asleep, she loses all her memory. She has taken to writing notes all over her arms and hands, especially one that says, “Stay Awake”, and is confused and frightened. She has lost two years of her life and now finds herself being searched for by detectives who think she is a murderer. There are two timelines, the present and two years ago, and you are following along with Liz trying to figure out what the hell is going on! Fast-paced and a quick read. Highly recommend! Thanks to the publisher and #NetGalley for my copy of “Stay Awake”.

Liv wakes up with no recollection of last two years of her life. She goes to places that she used to frequent in her life before two years and finds everything changed. This is not a one time thing but actually repeats every time she sleeps and wakes up. This time she wakes up a knife covered in blood and it starts off a rollercoaster kind of days for her as she doesn't remember a thing about the knife or the blood. And we have the same questions as Liv does at this point.

The narration keeps frantically flipping between her past and present and the urgency in the narration actually translates in the excitement for the reader. When we find that she might either have been a victim or suspect of double homicide, the plot intensifies. I suspected two different people for the homicide and obviously one of them was correct but it maintained the suspense till the end. Clearly, the other suspect was simply to cause confusion. Absolutely enjoyed reading this thriller even though I am not a fan of books with memory loss plots! it was engaging, fast-paced and had good twists!

Megan Goldin has become a must read Author for me. In Stay Awake, Liv Reese is struggling with a rare form of amnesia. She wakes up in a cab with no recollection of how she got there. She has weird child like writing on her hands that tell her to Stay Awake and to Wake Up. She doesn’t know why the writings on her hands or why someone else is living in her apartment. She discovers a knife in her pocket and a man has been murdered. Did she do it? Where did the knife come from? What is her connection to the murdered man?

I’m not usually a fan of timelines that go back and forth, but Goldin has it perfected and it just makes sense. As the story unfolded I felt my heart pounding. When a book has that effect on me, it’s a good one!
Thank you Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review of this book.

This book was AMAZING from start to finish. It was like a combination of 50 First Dates and a thriller flick mixed together. There was suspense,...suspense,....and more suspense. I highly recommend!

First off, I was super excited to get invited to read an advanced copy of this book in NetGalley. I absolutely loved Night Swim by Megan Goldin and couldn’t wait to read another book by her. I have to admit, I didn’t love this one quite as much. I had a hard time rating it because my opinion kept changing throughout. To be honest I was at a 3 star for the first 40% of the book. Then it began to pick up. I have to say I floated between 3-4 stars the whole time I was reading it. Ultimately I decided it does deserve 4 stars. Let me start with the things I didn’t care for about the book: 1. I am not a huge fan of memory loss books. For some reason I just get bored with them because there are so many out there. 2. The repetition in this book was over the top at times! I get it…she lost her memory BUT at times I felt like I was reading the same things over and over and over again. But now moving onto why I gave it a 4 star rating even though I often felt like it was just a 3 star. When I give a 3 star it’s just “okay” and I probably wouldn’t recommend it. A 4 star to me is good enough to recommend even though there are things that I might not have loved about it. I definitely feel as though this deserves the full 4 stars. Just because I don’t care for memory loss storylines doesn’t mean someone else wouldn’t find it intriguing. The things I really liked about this book: 1. The authors writing style. I love how it went back and forth from present day to 2 years earlier. 2. I found the storyline very suspenseful and I wanted to keep reading to find out who the killer was (even though I had predictions, I wasn’t correct in the end). 3. The detectives…to be honest it can be hit or miss with me when it comes to crime novels including detectives. Sometimes they can be very annoying. I have to say I really liked both Lavelle and Halliday. I liked how they worked together and the outcome of how the case was solved. 4. The ending was very good!! I feel like everything came together nicely in the end. So overall even though I felt like certain parts of this book were dragging, I did like it and would recommend it!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!!

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Sorry to say, I enjoyed this book less than Megan Goldin's earlier books, The Escape Room (2019) and The Night Swim (2020). All three share some undeniable strengths: they are intricately plotted, there is carefully crafted suspense, and they display the author's solid research into the professional worlds in which they are set.

The writing is a cut above, too, as is usually the case when the author served an apprenticeship as a journalist, cranking out a high volume of factually correct copy under deadline (as Goldin did.)

There was one flaw that they had in common as well. What I want from a book is to enter the world the author has created and glide along within it, never suffering any rude jolts (continuity glitches, grammatical lapses, culturally inappropriate terms) that jar me out of my absorption.

In the earlier two books, the only discordant notes were the frequent Britishisms that crept into the U.S.-set stories. One American after another says that someone "kept herself to herself." Of course, we Yanks say merely that we keep to ourselves, and Goldin betrays her British Commonwealth roots when she (and her editors) let that slip through -- or another that they "give someone a fright" rather than simply startling them.

In this book, I found "expresso" and a phone line that was engaged" rather than "busy" -- terms that I've only heard used by Brits. Also found the odd word "misogamist," which I'm sure will be corrected before publication.

Another distraction was, I think, a conscious choice: the repetition of main character Liv Reese's awakening without memories of the previous two years. Liv has a rare neurological disorder, repetitive amnesia, which is triggered every time she wakes up. She has simply lost two years and three months of her life, over and over and over again.

When I came across the triggering phone call (the last thing Liv recalls from her prior life) again, and again, and again, I snapped out of the magical reading spell each time. I get it -- the repetition was to force me to experience Liv's repetitive reality, and it worked, but it was hard going to find the thread each time (another parallel with Liv's experience?)

About Liv's disorder: Goldin's research lifted it well above the ordinary amnesia-themed novel. Also very strong were the police procedural chapters. And to be fair, the shifts from Liv's first-person voice and the detectives' third-person sections, and the alternation of the present-day, 24-hour period in which the crime is committed and solved, were seamless. No unpleasant jolts whatever.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press fro an advance readers copy.

This story started off so strong. Megan Goldin did a great job making me feel like I woke up in the back of a taxi and had not idea where I was. Her description of Liv's confusion as she tried to retrace her steps back t her apartment where clearly someone else lived. It's like she was missing a chunk of time in her life when she felt like she just woke up from a nap. Then, a brutal murder takes place and there are odd connections to Liv. I liked how the story is told from the perspective of Liv and bounces back and forth to the detective on the scene. I did feel like the story became drawn out at times but overall it was a good thriller and murder mystery.