This story goes back and forth from the present to the past. We are trying to piece together the story as is the main character Liv. She wakes up in a park and it’s two years later and she doesn’t know what’s happened in between. Gripping story detailing her memory loss and a persons mission to find out what happened to her friends.

I really liked this book! I found it to be a great thriller that kept me guessing the whole time. I never really thought I knew the ending, and I was definitely surprised! You won’t be disappointed!

This book was kind of a slow start for me, but once it started I didn't want to put it down. Could you imagine waking up and looking in the mirror and not recognizing yourself. You go to your office just to find out that 2 years have passed and its not even your office anymore. This book for me had everything in it that I want a thriller book to have. I enjoy when there are different views to how the story plays out and in the end they all come together.

Stay Awake by Megan Goldin was dark and twisty! I finished this mystery in a day after staying up way too late to finish it. Image forgetting everything of your life for the last two years every time you go to sleep and finding out your friends were murdered and you might be next. It’s a reason to never sleep again. But you keep waking up and having to piece everything together.

Liv wakes up in the back of a taxi not remembering much. She returns home to find strangers living in her home and a bloody knife in the place of her phone and the words STAY AWAKE on her hand.
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This starts her on a loop where every time she falls asleep she cannot remember anything and she realizes she is missing two years of her life and she may or may not be guilty of murder. This gave me a bit of The Flight Attendant vibes as she tried to unravel what’s real and what happened to her the last two years. This is a wild ride.
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Thank you @stmartinspress and @netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review

It was a slow go at first. The start didn’t keep my attention for too long. By the end I couldn’t put it down! There is a twist what I didn’t expect. I would definitely recommend this book to others.

What a captivating read. I always enjoy Megan Goldin's stories but what I love most is that they're all so different. Even the voice of the characters is different from each book to the next.

Stay Awake is a story of a woman who is living her personal "groundhog day." Time isn't actually frozen but every time Liv Reese falls asleep she wakes up with no memory of the past 2 years and 3 months. She wakes up and her last memory is of answering a phone call at her work desk. It's a summer day and she needs to get home to see Amy, her roommate. What seems like a nondescript day to be stuck on, it's actually quite a monumental day. She witnessed a horrific murder and came close to dying herself.

After the attempt on her life, she couldn't remember anything about what had happened but tried to move on. Liv has been haunted by this unsolved murder though and it seems her subconscious is going to trap her in this day until she can figure out exactly what she can't remember.

Goldin has such a creative mind, the stories she creates are unique and engaging. This one is no different. It'll keep you guessing and on your toes until you finally come to the plot's close.

This story is told between two different points-of-view. Liv Reese and Detective Darcy Halliday. Liv has woken up in the back of a cab in NYC and doesn't have the slightest clue of how she got there. In fact, she can't even remember anything from the last 2 years of her life but doesn't know that. As far as her mind is concerned, she's living two years in the past. She discovers her hands covered in her own handwriting telling her things like 'stay awake'. And most alarmingly, she discovers she's in possession of a bloody knife and that a local man has been found murdered. The woman leaving the murder scene looks an awful lot like Liv. She's now racing against time to figure out what happened in the time frame her mind has seemingly erased!

Stay Awake was fast paced, tension filled and suspenseful. Lots of twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Definitely recommend.

I loved the premise of Stay Awake, but as I started reading I started getting bored, I don’t know if it was the story or just the writing. The repetitiveness also didn’t help. The reveal of who the killer was wasn’t really surprising and I didn’t really care. I loved the short chapters I just wish it was a big more fast paced.

Stay Awake
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Genre: Thriller
Format: Kindle eBook and Audiobook
Date Published: 8/9/22
Author: Megan Goldin
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio
Narrators: Imogen Church and January LaVoy
Goodreads Rating: 4.06

I requested a digital advanced readers copy from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio and providing my opinion voluntarily and unbiased.

Synopsis: Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. A stranger who now lives in her apartment and forces her out in the cold and her phone is missing. That’s when she sees that her hands are covered in black pen, scribbled messages like graffiti on her skin: STAY AWAKE. Now, she’s lost and disoriented in a New York City that looks nothing like what she remembers. What did she do last night? Liv finds herself on the run for a crime she doesn’t remember committing as she tries to piece together the fragments of her life. But there’s someone who does know exactly what she did, and they’ll do anything to make her forget―permanently.

My Thoughts: My first thoughts is WOW! I did this mostly on audiobook but was fortunate enough to have an Arc copy of both. The narrators were fantastic and really breathed life into the characters, you felt like you were there. This is one of the best thrillers I have read this year and I have read a few. The premise of this plot, opening with a murder and working your way back in flashes, having no memory of what happened is a brilliant plot! The characters are well developed with depth, mystery, intrigue, and creative. The author’s writing style was complex, suspenseful, twisty, kept me engaged and was brilliantly written! I highly recommend you pick up this book that was released last week, I would recommend the audio because it was brilliantly done.

Megan Goldin has yet to write a book that I didn’t love, and this one may be my favorite of hers so far! Stay Awake follows Liv, a woman who loses the past two years of her memory every time she wakes up. The story is told from two points of view, following Liv and Detective Halliday, who is investigating a murder, and all signs point to Liv.

I absolutely love unreliable narrators, and the addition of a 50 First Dates type amnesiac main character really added a wonderful spin on the classic trope! It’s so frustrating (in the best way) throughout the novel knowing what Liv continues to forget. I found myself wanting to just jump into the pages and yell at her “You know this person!” or “This is what happened!”

Honestly, I can definitely see a reread in my future to go back through and see if I missed anything, because the whodunnit really threw me off! Highly recommend this one for thriller lovers!

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martins Press for this arc of Stay Awake by Megan Goldin!

The premise of this book had me super intrigued and I was anxious to read this after really loving Goldin's other books. The pacing of this book started off quick but slowed for me towards the middle, and then went lightening fast at the end. I think Liv was an interesting unreliable narrator, but she was almost too unreliable for me. I really just felt sad for her most of this book. I was into the memory loss thing until it just got TOO repetitive. The ending did not make any sense to me (like she gets away in that apartment easy peasy?) and I still didn't get a lot of my questions answered.

I would still read another book by this author in the future, this one just wasn't for me.

Memento meets 50 First Dates

Stay Awake is a mind-blowing psychological thriller that takes you on a wild ride.

Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. When she’s dropped off at the door of her apartment, a stranger answers the door. When Liv goes inside, all the furniture has changed and a new couple is now living there. That’s when she sees that her hands are covered in black pen with scribbled messages like “STAY AWAKE!”, "DON'T SLEEP" and “TRUST NO ONE”.

This fast pace, suspenseful thriller is definitely a page-turner. It jumps from past to present day but it never got convoluted. It was such a clever and entertaining book. I highly recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and Megan Goldin for an ARC of "Stay Awake" in exchange of an honest review.

Whoa! What a great read.
This was a Fast paced ride with twists and turns around every corner.
I cant thank you enough netgalley for a copy of this one!!
You will want to stay awake to read this one.

This story is told in first person from the point of view of Liv in dual timelines and in third person from the detectives assigned to the case, Halliday and Lavelle. Even though it jumped back and forth in both perspective and time, I had no trouble following along. Each chapter was labeled with either a day and time or something to the effect of “two years earlier”. There was an interesting performance art exhibit during the book that prompted an interesting discussion with my husband about following rules vs. instinct.

I enjoyed the rapport between the detectives and the way their different perspectives played off each other. The procedural aspect of a murder mystery is usually my favorite part. I was annoyed by the repetitiveness in Liv’s chapters that I understand was due to her “repetitive dissociative fugue” or amnesia issue, but I think that could have been conveyed without that much repetition. Liv also made a series of decisions that I found odd that were very convenient story wise, but just didn’t make sense to me regardless of her mental state. I couldn’t relate to her choices.

I found the mystery intriguing and most of my guesses were not even close with regards to the end which is always a good thing for me. This was my first read by this author.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for a copy provided for an honest review.

This book has the best opening; Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no recollection of where she's been or where she's going. She holds a bloody knife with no recollection of how she came to find it. Her hands are covered with ink where she's written STAY AWAKE and TRUST NO ONE.

As the book unfolds we follow the two detectives assigned to deal with the murder of a man found in an apartment and their number one suspect is Liv. The whole story takes place in one day, with time jumps back to Liv's life and the missing two years of her memory. While the whole premise sounds good in theory, the execution was lacking. The time jumps were ill timed at certain points and took me out of the story just as suspense was building. Sometimes the story felt repetitive. As a fan of Megan Goldin's previous books, this one just fell a little short for me.

I have always had mixed feelings about amnesia books, and while at one point I did feel like this story started to spin its wheels, overall I really liked it more than most amnesia books I've read. It wasn't entirely surprising, but had a lot of nice twists and turns.
Very Memento-inspired if you've seen the film!

This is by far the best thriller I’ve read this year, I couldn’t put it down and when I did I found myself dreaming about the story and couldn’t wait to pick it up again in the morning. From the very first chapter I was hooked, this book is gripping. The chapters are short and move the story along quickly but keeps you guessing and wondering the whole time. The book is the perfect length for a quick but fulfilling read and I for one can’t wait to read more from this author. I really can’t say enough good things about this book. It is an excellent thriller, the premise is interesting, the characters are likeable, the story is unpredictable, it’s everything you want an expect from a book of this genre. Definitely a must read for all thriller fans.

Megan Goldin is one of the best female thriller writers in the business. Once again she has written an absolute edge of your seat thriller with Stay Awake. This book is super unique and is unlike any other book I have read. This book pulls you in and does not let go. The uncertainly of what comes next keeps you guessing and it makes you want to keep reading deep into the night to reach the final conclusion. Her previous two books were excellent and this one keeps pace, delivering a thrill ride that you will not forget. Megan Goldin is cementing herself among the best in business. Thank you NetGalley for the advance copy of the book for my honest review.

4.5⭐️
Really enjoyed this one and finished it in one afternoon! An amnesia thriller that held my attention and kept me flipping pages to uncover what happened. Multiple timelines and perspectives. I enjoyed the detective side and Liv’s POV.

The only thing keeping me from giving it 5 stars is I have a couple unanswered questions after reading.