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.

Fantastic! It will be one of my favorites of the year! Quite a nail-biter and I loved the MC. Bring me all the Megan Goldin books!

This is a ridiculously good rollercoaster ride that’s sure to thrill thriller fans.

Live Reese loses two years worth of memory every time she falls asleep, forgetting that she was almost murdered and making her easy prey for a killer still at large.

This gave me Memento vibes, and I absolutely love an unreliable narrator.

Megan Goldin is the queen of dual timelines, and this book is no exception.

Get this on your pre-order lists now, because it’s sure to be a summer smash!

I rated this four stars because I guessed who the killer was, correctly, very early on, but I love Goldin’s writing so much that it didn’t phase me and I reveled in being right.

**Many thanks to #NetGalley and #StMartinsPress for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. My opinions are my own.**

#thriller #heartpounding #unreliablenarrator

Book: Stay Awake
Author: Megan Goldin
Release date: August 9, 2022
Rating: 4 ⭐️

Stay Awake is exactly what this book made me do. Every time Liv Reese wakes up she doesn’t remember anything from the past two years. Her home is no longer hers, she can’t get ahold of her best friend or her boyfriend and there’s writing all over her hands and arms telling her to “Stay awake.”

This book has a 50 First Dates in psychological thriller feel to it and you continue to relive things. The time line jumps at first get confusing as well as character POV switching between Liv (2 years ago or current) and detectives working on a homicide. It got a bit repetitive in stating the full names of the detectives over and over (sometimes within the same page) and some details that were poorly written, however overall this was a book I couldn’t put down! It got really creepy in a few spots and caused me to be nervous to go to the bathroom in the darkness of my home in the middle of the night and gave me some interesting dreams when I finally fell asleep. I was able to figure out the “who” part of the mystery pretty early in but it still held interest as the puzzle pieces all fell together.

Overall, good read for those that like psychological thrillers and don’t mind character POV and timeline changes.

Thank you NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this early digital copy in exchange for my thoughts.

This definitely reminded me of the movie Memento and kept my attention from start to finish. Megan Goldin hasn’t done me wrong yet!

A HUGE thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC of Stay Awake.

The story begins with Liz Reese suffering from a memory blackout, trying to remember how she ended up in the backseat of a taxi. The fear and frustration she feels is palpable to the reader. As the story unfolds, you uncover the traumatic situation that caused these blackouts.

Told from two perspectives, Liz and Detective Halliday, the story is easy to follow and keeps you wanting more.

Detective Halliday is investigating a recent murder, with the words WAKE UP written near the body. When Liz comes to in the back of a taxi, she has words scribbled all over her body— specifically the words STAY AWAKE. Liz spends the entire book questioning if these two situations are related, making for the perfect page turner.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for sending me an ARC of this novel! have never read anything by Megan Goldin before, but if it's as good as this one was, just might have to check it out.
really enjoyed this one; even though had predicted a key fact about two of the people closest to the main character, the ending still caught me off guard. This story kept me on the edge of my seat until the very last chapter, even though it began to feel a bit never ending with the consistent back and forth of whether or not the main detectives believed or did not believe Liv had committed the murder. look forward to checking out more of Goldin's work and definitely recommend this to people that are interested in thriller stories with a unique basis. Liv Reese's inability to remember anything after falling asleep was an interesting twist on a typical thriller.

Synopsis: a woman forgets everything when she falls asleep with her last memory being from over 2 years ago. liv reese finds herself in the middle of a murder she doesn't remember committing and unable to remember who the killer is. liv works to piece together who she is in present day and why she has no memory of the past 2 years while running from being blamed for a crime she cannot remember.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for sending me an ARC of this novel! have never read anything by Megan Goldin before, but if it's as good as this one was, I just might have to check it out. really enjoyed this one; even though I had predicted a key fact about two of the people closest to the main character, the ending still caught me off guard. This story kept me on the edge of my seat until the very last chapter, even though it began to feel a bit never ending with the consistent back and forth of whether or not the main detectives believed or did not believe Liv had committed the murder. look forward to checking out more of Goldin's work and definitely recommend this to people that are interested in thriller stories with a unique basis. Liv Reese's inability to remember anything after falling asleep was an interesting twist on a typical thriller.
Synopsis: a woman forgets everything when she falls asleep with her last memory being from over 2 years ago. liv reese finds herself in the middle of a murder she doesn't remember committing and unable to remember who the killer is. liv works to piece together who she is in present day and why she has no memory of the past 2 years while running from being blamed for a crime she cannot remember.

Stay Awake is a fast-paced thriller following Liv Reese, a woman who forgets everything about her life from the last two years every time she falls asleep. She quickly comes to the forefront as a suspect in a murder but, because she has no memory of the incident and has no idea who she can trust, she spends her time dodging everyone and trying to force herself to stay awake. As far as thrillers go, this was pretty solid. The main problem is that you have an author who is clearly not an American attempting to write a story set in America with American characters. The most notable instance was when someone was told they would need a referee, instead of a reference, for a job application. There is also a character who was supposedly in the military before getting a job with the NYPD and it seems that this was just a convenient way to give said character contacts in the CIA. There were no details on what branch of service the character was in or anything else that made it seem real. In fact, as someone who did serve in the military, it was more a television representation of military personnel than how the experience actually is. It should have either been researched better or left out completely, as it really served no purpose in the plot line, in my opinion.

I can’t thank NetGalley and the publishers enough for this advance reader’s copy in exchange for my review of this one. Megan Goldin is the author of one of my absolute favorites, The Night Swim, and I’ve been anxiously hoping to read another one by the author.

For fans of works like Memento, and dissociative identity, amnesia etc, this one is a hit. Our protagonist Liv wakes up next to a dead body with the murder weapon and can’t remember how she got there - I loved that throughout the story, we weren’t sure if Liv was a good guy or a bad guy, but it didn’t even matter - she was easy to like. This one flips back and forth from the past to the present, so if you’re not one to enjoy that style, this one might not work for you - I personally thought it was easy to figure out if I was in the present or the past.

My only slight criticism, minor as it is, this one wrapped up with a nice pretty bow, but doesn’t really account for what the story had been building on - and there was a side plot with the waiter and stalking that never really played out? Maybe it just played in to some of the paranoia that Liv was experiencing. Either way, this one was such an easy read that I finished in just under a day - highly recommend for a fast paced thriller!

Thank you again NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Interesting concept. I liked the idea of the boom, but I did find some parts were a bit boring and not as good as her first novel.

What a rollercoaster ride this was!! The story follows Liv Reese, who suffers from a rare form of amnesia . Every time she falls asleep, her brain sets back 2 years. Throw in the fact there’s a murder and she’s holding the bloody weapon with no recollection of the recent events, and you have yourself a thrilling read. Follow Liv as she tries to piece together what happened , who she is, and how she got from point A to point B. I love the timeline shifting , and the different perspectives. the characters were likable and not disappointing. Even the detectives had personalities about them that made them stand out and make you want to know more. The conclusion had me shook!!! I really hope to see this story make it to the big screen someday. It’s literally that good. I received this copy from NetGalley and special thanks to them for giving me the opportunity to read this early. I literally had my nose stuck in this book constantly and finished it in a few days.

Liv wakes up in the back of a taxi and has no recollection how she got there!! She’s dropped off in the middle of the night at who she thinks is Amy’s apartment but complete strangers open the door. Then more strange things keep happening. This book pulled me right in from the very first page and it just kept going and going!!! It’s got a “50 First Dates” movie vibe. I found myself not wanting to put it down and couldn’t wait to find out how it was going to end. I really enjoyed all the characters! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early release in exchange for my honest review. I can’t wait to read Megan Goldin’s next book!!

Between a 3.5 and 4, rounding up per my ARC review policy: This was highly entertaining, which is the number one thing I come to a mystery thriller for. It was a very fun premise (our MC has amnesia of the last 2 years that is retriggered every time she goes to sleep) that I've seen in visual media but never in a book. I also loved getting a detective POV - it feels like big thrillers these days rarely get a non-PI detective POV. That said, my biggest issue with this one was our MC and how wishy washy she was... not in the present day timeline, but in the past timeline. She seemed kind of dim, and I think it would have been more effective if there had been more of a defined contrast between her being very sharp pre-amnesia and very disoriented post-amnesia.

Still, all in all, this delivered the entertainment factor I was looking for and I think this officially puts Megan Goldin in an auto-read category for me

4/5. This was a very thrilling and fast read. I went into it mostly blind and had a lot of fun reading it and was pleasantly surprised by the amnesia plot point, only because I've never seen it done like this before. To have an MC who will always lose their memory upon waking up is unique, fresh and thrilling. I am also an extreme self-induced insomniac so this made it all the more fun to read. I did have several issues with the point, the first being the POV of the detectives. It was by far the weakest point of the book. It was too dry and bland & merely informative, without any tension suspense or edge. I would've loved it if it was done in 1st POV as well with added suspense and thrill from the tension of trying to find the murderer. I think the added background of the military stories etc weakened it and made it boring. it served nothing and didn't flesh out the characters either in the way the author hoped it would. Liv's POV pretty much carried this book. I also didn't like how the detective's POV fed us too many answers and made it too easy to predict every single plot twist. I pretty much knew exactly where everything was going pretty early on. I wish we were given maybe a delay in the povs to allow us to be led on/led astray substantially by Liv's POV. I was only nicely surprised by one thing in the end but it had to do mostly because we weren't given an exact motive behind it. So that made it kind of deflating as I read it since I had unanswered questions. But nonetheless still very much enjoyed this book.

What a unique thriller! I was obsessed with this story and in a lesser authors hands it could have been a disaster. The continual shift between current day with Liv not remembering anything every time she wakes up, her life prior to the trauma that caused the amnesia, and the events that led up to the crime in question, was executed flawlessly. I was able to easily follow the shift in timeline and couldn’t turn those e-book pages fast enough.⁠
The other thing I loved about this was that though Liv was an unreliable MC, it wasn’t because she was painted as a weak woman who was drunk, but because of her medical condition. I’m glad to see that tired trope fall to the wayside while keeping the fun of an unreliable narrator in play. ⁠
Stay Awake was a fantastic follow up to The Night Swim that caught me and didn’t let me go until the end. It’s clear that Goldin has cemented her place with other great thriller authors.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the e-arc! I loved THE NIGHT SWIM, so I was really excited to read Megan Goldin's newest book! STAY AWAKE is out 8/9/22

SUMMARY:
Liv wakes up, with no memory of what happened or how she got there. Her apartment isn't hers, she can't get ahold of her friends, and she has random writing all over her arms. As time goes on, she quickly realizes she doesn't remember anything from the past two years. To add to her confusion, there's been a murder and the cctv clip of the suspect leaving the scene looks a lot like her. Now it seems like someone is after her, worried she's going to remember what happened two years ago.

MY THOUGHTS:
This book was quick and very good! I spent the almost the entirety of one day reading the whole book.

STAY AWAKE is a female detective thriller/psychological thriller- because we get Detective Halliday figuring out the case, but we also get the timeline of Liv figuring out her memory loss, and what happened two years ago- and the story bounces around between all three.

While Liv forgetting all of her memories is sort of unrealistic, it did create a good thriller. I was as invested as she was in figuring out what is going on. She didn't know who to trust and became so paranoid and it created all of the suspense!

I didn't see the ending coming, and while it wasn't unbelievable, I wanted more from it. I needed whys and a little bit of explanation.

I loved the concept of an unreliable narrator who the reader experiences forget her memories - many times, the reader was more in the know than the narrator herself, which made for an engaging story. However, I didn’t find the reveal particularly compelling and there were a few extraneous characters who didn’t seem to serve a purpose other than to throw the reader of the scent of who the true villain was.

At first, after reading this book, I thought it was great! Fast paced, unique storyline, so engrossing. Then when I sat down to write this review, I frealized there's a huge plot hole, and a couple minor ones that just couldn't be overlooked. Like I'm now wondering how it made it this far in the publishing process without being noticed or addressed. I just really hope it's taken care of before it's actually released. Had it not been for that, this would've easily been a 5 star read.

***STOP HERE! SPOILERS AHEAD ***

*** SPOILERS!!! ***
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Why was the killer stalking Liv before anything happened? I get that he was stalking her after the murders to prevent her from outing him if her memory returned, but why before!?! Why the milk in the fridge? Why the flowers addressed to her & the meal in the oven, before the murder? There was no explanation of why and as far as I could tell, no reason for it. There's also the art show with the mysterious artist that goes unexplained, the waiter that kept calling, the investor. I get that they were supposed to distract and throw off the reader but they really just left me confused without any real point or complete explanation.

Megan Goldin consistently writes edge-of-your-seat, unputdownable books! I loved Stay Awake. I generally read several books at a time, dabbling in a chapter here and there of each, but when I started Stay Awake, I was invested in figuring out what was going on with Liv until the very end. This book goes back and forth in time, and switches between the FBI agent looking for Liv and Liv's point of view as we figure out why she can't remember anything and if she actually killed that man in the apartment that she's never seen before and doesn't remember being with.

Megan has cemented herself as one of my favorite thriller authors, and I can't wait to see what she writes next.

Liv Reese wakes up and don't remember where is she and what happened.

It is an exceptional psychological thriller full of suspense. It is exactly that kind of book where you cannot sleep or think about anything else until you finish it.

Definitely going to read more my Megan Goldin.