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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
Josie Borden’s life becomes upended when her father Chuck Buhrman’s murder is re-examined in the hit podcast Reconsidered. Her twin sister Lanie’s eyewitness testimony is the lynchpin that holds together the entire case that sent the teenaged neighbor Warren Cave to prison 12 years ago. With no weapon found, Warren’s fingerprints in the house, and no witnesses to corroborate Warren’s claim that he was high and held down in lake water by a group of kids in the middle of the night at the cemetery, Lanie’s word and tearful testimony was all the jury had to go on. But Warren’s mother Melanie is out for justice, and convinced Poppy Parnell to investigate.
Poppy’s podcast becomes a hit and Josie becomes increasingly anxious—and not just because the personal nightmare that is her life is suddenly all anyone is talking about in grocery stores and on the subway. Josie’s entire past is something she’s lied about to her boyfriend, Caleb: in her version there’s no murdered father, no emotionally distraught mother that abandoned her for a cult, no drug addicted sister that betrayed her by sleeping with her first love. To be fair, Josie’s lie was told under the belief that her relationship with Caleb would be brief and casual, and the tension that comes from Josie’s fear of being caught in this lie doesn’t overall serve the story in any significant way. All I could think was, If your boyfriend flips out about this when he finds out the truth about your personal tragedy, I will like him less and think you haven’t lost anything all that great. To me, it was an understandable lie, brought out from a reasonable distrust of other people and a reasonable desire to have an identity outside of that sort of tragedy.
**spoilers**
The podcast starts out by rehashing and airing the family’s dirty laundry: Chuck’s affair with Warren’s mother, Melanie (supposedly not his first dalliance). Melanie seems rather one-note, especially in her one significant scene.
The story really starts after the podcast hits it big and Josie’s aunt (who raised her after her mother bolted for the commune) calls to inform her that her mother has died by suicide. Melanie’s big scene comes at the funeral, where she enters looking like a seductress with painted lips and a low cut dress, and she mistakes Josie for Lanie and says all sorts of horrible things to her. Lanie, by the way, still lives in this small town that Melanie lives in. They probably would have bumped into each other from time to time. Melanie could have been a nuanced character who was understandably angry that she believed her innocent son was put away for a murder her didn’t commit at the word of young girl, but waiting twelve years to confront said girl at the funeral of her dead mother—the same woman whose husband Melanie slept with—makes Melanie seem just awful and vindictive instead of a justifiably protective mother.
Yet Are You Sleeping is very enjoyable to read... for most of it.
Things are further complicated as we learn more about Lanie’s descent into drugs and rebellion after her father’s murder, and when we learn that Lanie not only seduced Josie’s boyfriend, but ended up marrying him and having a child with him. But Josie and Lanie’s reconciliation is somewhat too easily fixed for all of the ways that Lanie hurt the family (there is an attempt at nuance here, but overall Josie never really tells Lanie off for the ways she acted truly terrible).
The crimes Lanie has committed against her family, friends, and community are highlighted in the podcast and it puts Lanie’s testimony, reliability, and trustworthiness into question... and Poppy begins to posit other possible suspects.
Like Melanie, Poppy is equally one-note. She’s the clear villain, taking no responsibility for the way her investigations impact a very real, very grief-stricken family, and her harassment of the family paints her as someone not interested in justice but only money and fame.
The twist that was promised, however, is predictable and not satisfying. Finding out that their mother killed their father, that Lanie’s brain reflexively disallowed her to believe it out of trauma, and that their mother wrote out a confession just before her suicide and that it was conveniently sent back to the family only to to absolve Lanie of the blame when she finally found the murder weapon was more boring than suspenseful, tense, or shocking. We were led to believe that Erin Buhrman did not know of her husband’s affairs, that she was out of the house the night of the murder caring for a friend who just had oral surgery. But it was not surprising to learn that she DID know (she wrote of it in her journals, and Lanie knew her mother knew because she had read them) and it was obvious that Erin was able to slip out that night because her friend was hopped up on medication and pain killers. All this revelation does is make Josie more sympathetic to her sister’s reaction to her trauma, but also all it does is further depress a family who is grieving a death of a mother, sister, an aunt that they now discover was a murderer—of a premeditated murder that had been planned and failed before.
Overall, it was a good and interesting read, until the end when it sort of fell apart. 3 stars.
Poppy’s podcast becomes a hit and Josie becomes increasingly anxious—and not just because the personal nightmare that is her life is suddenly all anyone is talking about in grocery stores and on the subway. Josie’s entire past is something she’s lied about to her boyfriend, Caleb: in her version there’s no murdered father, no emotionally distraught mother that abandoned her for a cult, no drug addicted sister that betrayed her by sleeping with her first love. To be fair, Josie’s lie was told under the belief that her relationship with Caleb would be brief and casual, and the tension that comes from Josie’s fear of being caught in this lie doesn’t overall serve the story in any significant way. All I could think was, If your boyfriend flips out about this when he finds out the truth about your personal tragedy, I will like him less and think you haven’t lost anything all that great. To me, it was an understandable lie, brought out from a reasonable distrust of other people and a reasonable desire to have an identity outside of that sort of tragedy.
**spoilers**
The podcast starts out by rehashing and airing the family’s dirty laundry: Chuck’s affair with Warren’s mother, Melanie (supposedly not his first dalliance). Melanie seems rather one-note, especially in her one significant scene.
The story really starts after the podcast hits it big and Josie’s aunt (who raised her after her mother bolted for the commune) calls to inform her that her mother has died by suicide. Melanie’s big scene comes at the funeral, where she enters looking like a seductress with painted lips and a low cut dress, and she mistakes Josie for Lanie and says all sorts of horrible things to her. Lanie, by the way, still lives in this small town that Melanie lives in. They probably would have bumped into each other from time to time. Melanie could have been a nuanced character who was understandably angry that she believed her innocent son was put away for a murder her didn’t commit at the word of young girl, but waiting twelve years to confront said girl at the funeral of her dead mother—the same woman whose husband Melanie slept with—makes Melanie seem just awful and vindictive instead of a justifiably protective mother.
Yet Are You Sleeping is very enjoyable to read... for most of it.
Things are further complicated as we learn more about Lanie’s descent into drugs and rebellion after her father’s murder, and when we learn that Lanie not only seduced Josie’s boyfriend, but ended up marrying him and having a child with him. But Josie and Lanie’s reconciliation is somewhat too easily fixed for all of the ways that Lanie hurt the family (there is an attempt at nuance here, but overall Josie never really tells Lanie off for the ways she acted truly terrible).
The crimes Lanie has committed against her family, friends, and community are highlighted in the podcast and it puts Lanie’s testimony, reliability, and trustworthiness into question... and Poppy begins to posit other possible suspects.
Like Melanie, Poppy is equally one-note. She’s the clear villain, taking no responsibility for the way her investigations impact a very real, very grief-stricken family, and her harassment of the family paints her as someone not interested in justice but only money and fame.
The twist that was promised, however, is predictable and not satisfying. Finding out that their mother killed their father, that Lanie’s brain reflexively disallowed her to believe it out of trauma, and that their mother wrote out a confession just before her suicide and that it was conveniently sent back to the family only to to absolve Lanie of the blame when she finally found the murder weapon was more boring than suspenseful, tense, or shocking. We were led to believe that Erin Buhrman did not know of her husband’s affairs, that she was out of the house the night of the murder caring for a friend who just had oral surgery. But it was not surprising to learn that she DID know (she wrote of it in her journals, and Lanie knew her mother knew because she had read them) and it was obvious that Erin was able to slip out that night because her friend was hopped up on medication and pain killers. All this revelation does is make Josie more sympathetic to her sister’s reaction to her trauma, but also all it does is further depress a family who is grieving a death of a mother, sister, an aunt that they now discover was a murderer—of a premeditated murder that had been planned and failed before.
Overall, it was a good and interesting read, until the end when it sort of fell apart. 3 stars.
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This premise grabbed me, however I found the execution very unsatisfactory. This is one of the books I read but completely forgot about.
Thoroughly enjoyed this, I wasn’t distracted by kitschy tropes. The love story was more between the sisters than the hunky Australian. The twist in the crime was enough that you didn’t guess from the first page. The author didn’t try to make the investigative journalist even remotely redeeming. A very refreshing read.
True crime Podcast meets thriller mystery. Poppy Parnell is a reporter investigating an old murder for her new podcast. Convinced that the man convicted of murdering Josie and Lanie Buhrman’s father is innocent, Poppy sets out in her podcast to re-examine the evidence. Meanwhile, Josie and Lanie’s estranged relationship moves to center stage when Lanie returns home for her mother’s funeral. The girls haven’t seen or heard from their mother in years after she joined a cult shortly after their father’s death. As the podcast unfolds, Lanie and Josie begin to repair their relationship and uncover long buried memories. I liked the premise of this book. The true crime podcast industry can sometimes forget that there are real people and real feelings behind all of the sensationalized serialized stories on a podcast. Entertaining and, even though some have called it predictable, I didn’t see the answer until the very end.
In Are You Sleeping, a podcast reopens a murder case and destroys the lives of everyone involved. I kept waiting for a big twist, and there wasn't one. The book was ok, but I think that it will make an AMAZING tv series in the spirit of Sharp Objects (another book that I wasn't super wild about, but had an amazing HBO mini-series.) It's great for fans of the podcasts Serial, My Favorite Murder, and Up and Vanished.
I did win this book on Goodreads.
What I liked most about this book is it gives the perspective of the victim's family.
What is keeping me from giving the book 5 stars is I didn't like Jo. I can't put my finger on why. I can understand why she reacted the way she did and that is not the reason. I was hoping thinking about this for a couple days after I finished the book hoping I could figure it out. I haven't.
Despite this, I did enjoy this book. I am not sure if I will read other books by the author. I really liked the perspective (I mentioned that earlier if you forgot).
I do think Warren is a better person because I would be bitter and angry at the world if I spent over 10 years in jail for a crime I didn't commit.
What I liked most about this book is it gives the perspective of the victim's family.
What is keeping me from giving the book 5 stars is I didn't like Jo. I can't put my finger on why. I can understand why she reacted the way she did and that is not the reason. I was hoping thinking about this for a couple days after I finished the book hoping I could figure it out. I haven't.
Despite this, I did enjoy this book. I am not sure if I will read other books by the author. I really liked the perspective (I mentioned that earlier if you forgot).
I do think Warren is a better person because I would be bitter and angry at the world if I spent over 10 years in jail for a crime I didn't commit.
A very readable, excellent mystery. The ending is a little disappointing — I was hoping for yet another twist — but I liked how the author wove together Josie’s story with parts of the true crime podcast.
When you finish a book in less 8 hours (there were necessary breaks...) you know it’s something that hooks you. The combination of the podcast transcript / reddit-like commentary with the story being told by one of the daughters made for an interesting way to tell the story. I was instantly drawn into to the mystery and trying to put together what had really happened on that fateful night. Though fictional, this story shows how everyone reacts to tragedy differently; and how every view of a incident is shaped by history.