#BookReview ‘Stay Awake’ by Megan Goldin

About the book…

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 brownstone, a stranger answers―a stranger who now lives in her apartment and forces her out in the cold. She reaches for her phone to call for help, only to discover it’s missing, and in its place is a bloodstained knife. That’s when she sees that her hands are covered in black pen, scribbled messages like graffiti on her skin: STAY AWAKE.

Two years ago, Liv was living with her best friend, dating a new man, and thriving as a successful writer for a trendy magazine. Now, she’s lost and disoriented in a New York City that looks nothing like what she remembers. Catching a glimpse of the local news, she’s horrified to see reports of a crime scene where the victim’s blood has been used to scrawl a message across a window, the same message that’s inked on her hands. What did she do last night? And why does she remember nothing from the past two years? 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.

In the vein of SJ Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep and Christopher Nolan’s cult classic Memento, Megan Goldin’s Stay Awake is an electrifying novel that plays with memory and murder

My thanks to John from St Martins Press for my gifted e-arc of ‘Stay Awake’ which is available in e-book, hardcover and audiobook editions.

This is a book which demands your full attention, we have all been where central protagonist Liv, has been, at the start of the novel, where our last memory could have been mere minutes ago and yet the evidence around suggests that a long stretch of time has passed.

However, unlike the rest of us suddenly caught off guard by the change of seasons or a lapse in time, Liv finds herself in a  taxi, with hair longer than she remembers it being, much colder than the summer scene she imagines where she answered her work phone in her position of journalist at Cultura magazine.

Also.she has writing all over her hands and arms telling her to stay awake, don’t fall asleep, because,when she falls asleep she forgets everything that happened in the last 2 years and 3 months.4

As she, and us, the readers, try to piece together the events that escape her, and what involvement she has in a murder with those eponymous words painted in blood on the window, we have Darcey Halliday, a police detective determined to make her mark on her first case. With a covert past that she is not quick in revealing to her fellow police, she is involved in a murder which defies description and which might involve Liv.

As Darcey and Liv frantically work to solve who is after Liv and who murdered this unidentified man, the novel flips the clock back prior to Liv’s memory loss where she is being potentially stalked, is losing her grip on reality, and is exposed to some truly traumatic performance art. As the plot bubbles with barely concealed malice and suspense, we, the readers, are trying to understand Liv’s mindset as a potentially unreliable narrator of her own experiences. She has an encounter with a waiter who then goes on to repeatedly contact her at work, mysterious steps following her down the road on dark nights, things moved around in her apartment…all these tings lead to an increasingly fractured gap in reality .

Whether Darcey will be able to help her is debatable as first of all, she has to find Liv !

I was completely gripped by the narrative, Darcey has such a firm presence ,and Liv whilst she is desperately scrabbling in the dark, has this core strength which is telling her firstly not to trust anyone and secondly, determination to work out just why she falls asleep and forgets absolutely everything…

This is such an engaging novel, it is a great thriller which I thoroughly enjoyed and did not guess what was coming at any point!

About the author…

MEGAN GOLDIN worked as a correspondent for Reuters and other media outlets where she covered war, peace, international terrorism and financial meltdowns in the Middle East and Asia.

She is now based in Melbourne, Australia where she raises three sons and is a foster mum to Labrador puppies learning to be guide dogs. ‘The Escape Room’ is her debut novel.

Links-http://www.megangoldin.com/

Twitter @megangoldin @StMartinsPress