WOW. I loved The Night Swim by Goldin but this.. this was something else. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had a thriller make me feel this way. I truly had no idea where it was going, had no clue who the killer was, and couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.

Liv’s amnesia gave me Memento vibes and made for a very interesting but complicated part of the story. I mean complicated in a good way - you’re frustrated in that CMON REMEMBER SO WE CAN WRAP THIS UP which makes the thriller all the more juicy. I loved the two detectives assigned to the case and how they handled the investigation. It was all just done so well.

If you’re looking for a good thriller that’ll knock your socks off, this is the one for you.

🔪VERDICT: 5 STARS ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you @stmartinspress and @netgalley for an ARC!

Books that deal with amnesia, but adding an element of mystery on top of it, really made this book an absolute winner for me.

Learning what exactly happened that caused Liv to not understand why she can't remember anything since her phone rang at her work desk, was a great plot twist in the book. I could feel the stress and anxiety through the pages each time Liv woke up without remembering where she was and why she couldn't remember anything.

What a great book; and won't skip reading any books by this author!

Thank you to Netgalley for the ebook ARC! I LOVED LOVED LOVED Night Swim, so I was very excited for this one, too.

This one definitely kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was a little bit longer than I think was necessary.

I think this is a really interesting premise. This woman keeps waking up and can’t remember anything that’s happened to her in two years. How horrifying that must be.

You have to piece together what has unfolded little bit by little bit as she is able to stay awake and begin to find things, write them down, etc.

Overall this was pretty good!

3.5/5⭐️

I highly recommend the audio for this one. It is narrated by Imogen Church and January Lavoy, two SOLID female narrators who really bring these characters to life.

This does have a detective element lending it to more of a crime thriller, which I love but I know some people don't.

Goldin's descriptions really give you a mental image of the characters in your mind's eye, which I appreciate. Our main protagonist Liv has memory problems, every time she falls asleep she loses 2 years of her life. The premise, paired with the slippery timeline in the narrative and dual points of view make for a fast paced, and jarring (in a good way) reading experience. She uses the messy timeline to purposefully put the reader into the shoes of Liv and misdirect suspicions.

I missed some of the social commentary that came with Goldin's last novel, "The Night Swim." I preferred that one to this. "Stay Awake" seems like her way of writing more of a fun thriller with a little less depth.

The reveal felt lackluster, unfortunately. I didn't understand the motives of one of the characters and I would have like to have gotten more information and had those loose ends tied up.

Overall this kept my attention and took me for a ride. If you enjoyed Christopher Nolan's Memento, this has a similar premise and you might enjoy this as well.

Stay Awake is full frightening scenes. Readers certainly won’t need to be warned to “stay awake”—the story and the writing will make sure of that. Curious if we’ll see Halliday and Lavelle on the pages of another Goldin thriller—the two are so opposite but make a great team.

Reviewed the audiobook which is how I listened to this book which I absolutely loved and could not put down.

I'm the master of unintentionally scheduling myself to read books with similar premises very close together.

This was the second book in August that I read with an unreliable narrator with extreme memory loss. So I went into this one skeptical, since my previous read was not particularly good.

Liv wakes up in the back of a cab with STAY AWAKE scrawled on her hand. She doesn't remember where she came from but she's eager to get home. But when she arrives at her apartment something is off. Her roommate isn't there, and a couple she's never seen have taken over the space.

Every time Liv falls asleep her brain resets, and she awakens having lost the last two years of her life

As she starts unravelling the events of the last few days, she finds clues that she may have witnessed something terrible, and she may be involved in a recent murder. Will she be able to figure out what happened before it's too late?

I love a story with dual timelines, and this one balances it really well. It's completely propulsive. I appreciate that Liv made realistic decisions.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for an arc of this title.

Megan Goldin’s Stay Awake is the story of Liv Reese who wakes up in the back of a taxi. She has no idea how she got there, what she has done, and she has lost two years of her life. I voluntarily read this complimentary copy of this well-written, suspenseful book that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the end.

When Liv wakes up in the back of a taxi, she has no idea where she's come from. She asked to be dropped off at her apartment, but when she tries to get in, she finds two people living there, and the entire apartment has changed.

Confused and unable to figure out what's going on, Liv starts to realize that something has happened to her. And it might be connected to a murder.

Jumping back and forth between the past and present, <i>Stay Awake</i> takes you on a wild ride to find out what exactly happened to Liv, and her past may be the key to unlocking her present.

I really enjoyed this book - it was fast moving and has all the makings for a wild right. It was hard to put down and it was easy to feel Liv's fear, both past and present, as she realizes something is deeply wrong with her life.

Definitely a great read that you won't be able to put down.

I've seen some reviews saying that they saw all of the twists and plot elements coming, and maybe I'm clueless, because I just didn't. I continued to be wrecked by this book.

So, so, good!

EXCELLENT BOOK. I don't usually love the unreliable narrator element in a book, but this worked for me. I thought this was an "on the edge of your seat" read, and I loved it.

This book was wild. I didn't love it quite as much as Night Swim, but I really was on edge. It reminded me a lot of that movie where the guy keeps waking up and has to piece things together about his existence solely based on his tattoos...Memento, maybe?

Anway, this author can WRITE. I loved this book and did not see the twists and turns coming!

I haven’t read a psychological thriller that I loved since Verity… UNTIL NOW!

This story follows Liv Reese’s past and present. She thinks she committed a murder but she doesn’t remember.. because she doesn’t remember the past two years of her life.

I loved following along with Liv as the story told her past memories and how her life unfolded to what it is currently. She is an unreliable narrator, but in a good way (I normally find this frustrating but didn’t!)

I’m mildly obsessed with one of the detectives on the case who doesn’t jump to conclusions about any information given to her 🔎

Mark your calendars for 8/9/2022! This was my favorite ARC read yet 🔪

Read if you enjoy:
🔪 unreliable narrators
🔪 who-done-it murder mysteries
🔪 psychological thrillers
🔪 alternating timelines

i’m such a fan of Goldin’s work and this was one of my most anticipated 2022 thrillers… but it completely missed the mark for me 😭

even with the short, quick chapters, i struggled with wanting to pick it back up and it took me way longer than normal to finish a thriller of this length.

i felt like the major twist wasn’t that shocking, and the motive behind it was not revealed/explained at all? and then it just… ended?

every chapter felt the same—and i get why, the MC has major amnesia and memory loss—but whew. the flip flopping POV was choppy and clunky too.. sometimes it was 2 years prior, some times it was present day, sometimes it was present day minus 24 hours… it was hard to get “in the groove.”

overall i just wanted so much more 🥺 but i’ve read all this authors work and LOVEDDDDD both of her books prior to this so expectations were high.

it really was just like BEOFRE I GO TO SLEEP but not as well executed.

thank you St Martins Press for the gifted ARC!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

𝘼 𝙢𝙪𝙧𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨𝙣’𝙩 𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙧 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜. 𝘼 𝙠𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨𝙣’𝙩 𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙧 𝙢𝙚𝙚𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜. 𝙈𝙚𝙜𝙖𝙣 𝙂𝙤𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣’𝙨 𝙎𝙩𝙖𝙮 𝘼𝙬𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙛𝙮𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙨 𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙗𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙡𝙮.

I went into this one nervous - I loved The Night Swim, but not so much The Escape Room - thankfully I really enjoyed this one. I was instantly intrigued from page one and the story just kept getting better as I read more.

In Stay Awake, we follow Liz Reese - who wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea how she got there. When she arrives at her home she's met with a stranger who now lives in her apartment. Confused, she tries to pull out her phone to call for help but is met with a bloodstained knife in the place where her phone was. She then discovers that her hands are marked with black ink that leaves a message saying STAY AWAKE.

I love that we get flashbacks. For example, we also follow Liv’s previous life two years ago - where she lives with her best friend and is dating a man. She’s a successful writer for a magazine. However, in the present, she has no idea what’s going on.

I really clicked with this story and found myself flying through it. I really enjoyed the way the story was written and that ending wasn’t something I had predicted. Some detectives are also trying to piece together some recent murders that are happening, and the connection between them and STAY AWAKE had me so intrigued. I didn’t know whether Liz was responsible or not. This was a great thriller I found myself entertained by. I would definitely recommend this to all thriller lovers.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for my review copy - all thoughts are my own!

What would you do if every time you fell asleep you woke up with no memory of what happened for the past 2.5 years? Who can you trust? How do you function when the world has left you behind and your whole existence has changed but you can't remember it? This is how it is for Liv Reese who wakes in the back of a taxi with no clue how she got there and messages scribbled in ink all over her hands. One of these- STAY AWAKE was also discovered written in blood at a crime scene where a man was stabbed to death. Did Liv do it? Who is that living in her apartment now and why can't she get ahold of her best friend or boyfriend? Until she figures out how she is involved in this crime the only thing she can do is run, try to stay awake and trust no one. This was a wild ride of a book. I kind of had a sense of where this one might be heading but interesting concept for book and author is plainly gifting at weaving a tale of suspense. This is my 2nd book by Megan Goldin and I'm a fan.

I started listening to this book as a audiobook, but the narrator’s voice was so calm and soothing that I kept falling asleep, forgetting what was happening in the book, and having to listen multiple times. Since I liked the premise of the book and enjoyed the parts that I remembered being read to me, I got a hard copy of the book and started it from the beginning. I enjoyed the book so much, I finished it over the course of two days. The book’s main character has a condition that causes her to forget everything that occurred the last two years if she falls asleep. This time, she wakes up and finds that she is being accused of a murder. The book jumps around quite a bit with the narrator as well as now versus two years ago. Another intriguing read by Megan Goldin.

I always enjoy the books Megan Goldin writes and this was no different. She has a way of creating complex characters and story lines that I don't find in other thriller/mystery novels. There were so many red herrings and I didn't see the final plot twist coming. I really liked how the main character's backstory was slowly sprinkled in throughout the novel.

This was a decent thriller. It was an interesting story about a woman who wakes up one day and no one at her job, in her personal life, etc knows who she is or thinks that she still works there, etc. I enjoyed the book but didn't fully understand all the twists.

It’s the middle of the night in the city that never sleeps. Liv Reese is exhausted. She wants to collapse in her own bed. She takes a cab from Manhattan, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge, staggers out of the car, and buzzes the intercom of her brownstone. Why isn’t her roommate Amy letting her in? A door opens but it’s not Amy.

I step forward, eager to get into the warmth of my apartment and, hopefully soon, the comfort of my bed. As I move across the threshold, the woman slams the door shut to try to keep me out.

“Ouch.” I wince when the door hits my foot.

Despite the pain, I don’t move my foot out of the way.

“You need to go,” she tells me.

“That’s my apartment.” I point to the top of the landing.

“That’s where we live,” says the man. “You’ve made a mistake.”

Maybe Liv is mistaken because the interior is very different—her eclecticism has been replaced with a more minimalist design. But when Liv looks outside, she spots the brightly painted flower boxes in the apartment window across the way—the same view she’s had for years. She leaves, totally disoriented, and pats herself down, looking for her phone. In place of the phone she finds a bunch of bills in her front pocket. Lastly, wrapped in a T-shirt, she finds a stainless steel knife streaked with fresh blood. It clatters to the ground. Liv’s horrified that something so gory is in her possession. She wraps the shirt around the knife and throws the bundle in a garbage can. She flags down a cab, thinking she’ll go see her boyfriend, Marco, then decides against it after giving herself a once-over and discovering some scribbled messages on her hands:

Above my knuckles are letters written in black ballpoint pen. I put both fists together. The letters spell out the words STAY AWAKE. Above my right wrist I’ve written the name and address of a place called Nocturnal.

I lean forward and tell the driver to take me there instead.

The bare bones of the plot are laid out in the first few pages. Why doesn’t Liv Reese remember where she lives? Why is she in possession of a bloody knife? She doesn’t remember anything that has happened to her in the last two years. The writing on her hands is her way of forcing herself to stay in the present because when she collapses into sleep, she wakes up to a world that doesn’t make sense. The timeline shifts frequently between present-day and two years earlier, but Goldin only gives tantalizing, sketchy clues as to what might have caused Liv’s disorientation.

Darcy Halliday is a new homicide detective in her first months on the job, and has yet work her own case. While jogging she catches a message from headquarters that there is a homicide nearby. She’s on it, arriving so quickly she’s first on the scene. The victim is a young man. Halliday asks the medical examiner, Dr. Franklin, if he finds anything strange:

“Other than the gaping hole in his chest?” he asked flippantly, before realizing Halliday was serious. “What’s troubling you, Detective?”

“Looks to me like he slept through his own murder.”

“You think he was drugged?”

“I’d say it’s a distinct possibility. There’s no bruises or scratches on his body. No sign of a struggle.”

Halliday runs with that thought and examines the victim’s hands and nails, but find no abrasions or trauma. A senior homicide cop, Detective Jack Lavelle, arrives and tells her they’ll be working the case together, which to Halliday’s mind is preferable to him pulling rank and taking over. The last clue uncovered is a doozy—a message that looks like gibberish written on the floor-to-ceiling window.

“It’s sign writing. It was written backward so it can be read properly from the outside,” said Halliday.

“What does it say?” the photographer asked, taking a burst of photos.

“It says: WAKE UP!”

In the meantime, Liv desperately looks for familiar anchors. She doesn’t have a phone, a bank card, a computer—who wouldn’t feel adrift in such circumstances? She shows up at her workplace. In her mind, she’s a successful writer for a trendy magazine. But like her apartment, everything is different, even though the employees seem to know who she is. To say more would be to give away a complicated, ingenious plot. Suffice it to say when Liv catches glances of social media and learns of a horrific murder, capped off with mysterious writing—the same writing that’s on her hands—she is thrown into turmoil and confusion. Could she have murdered someone unknowingly? To Liv, her mind is an unreliable narrator—can she trust her instincts when she senses she’s being followed?

As with Goldin’s hit debut novel, The Escape Room, Stay Awake is full of complex, riveting, frightening scenarios. Readers certainly won’t need to be warned to “stay awake”—the story and the writing will make sure of that. Curious if we’ll see Halliday and Lavelle on the pages of another Goldin thriller—the two are ying and yang but make a great team.