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A review by onceuponahaybale
Stay Awake by Megan Goldin
4.0
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.
Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with STAY AWAKE scribbled on her arms in pen, a knife with blood on it, and no recollection of where she is or how she got there. All Liv remembers is two years ago, when she and her best friend lived together, and she worked at a culture magazine in New York City. Now, it's a new season, her apartment is owned by a new couple, and a man has been found dead with the message WAKE UP on the window in his blood...eerily similar to the print on Liv's own arms.
The book alternates between Liv's first-person POV and the detectives' third person POV, with 95% of the story taking place in a 24-hour period starting on a Wednesday at 3 a.m., as we follow Liv in her attempts to outrun the police while trying to regain her memory and, more importantly, to stay awake.
I listened to the audiobook ARC I received for this, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear Imogen Church's voice! She's personally one of my favorite audiobook narrators, after having heard her narrate Ruth Ware's Turn of the Key . I know some people don't like her style, as she tends to dramatize her readings, but I thought it worked really well here.
Once I passed the 50% mark, I couldn't put it down! Things started falling into place, and the time honestly flew by. I felt like the book really benefitted from alternating perspectives, adding to the unreliability of the Liv as a narrator. I loved that we were thrown right into Liv's perspective as she's waking up. It would be like watching 50 First Dates from Lucy's perspective instead of Henry's...if Lucy was a suspect for murder. We're finding things out as Liv does, supplemented by the detectives' findings in the POVs in almost every other chapter.
I could see this book being frustrating for some, especially because the beginning is a little repetitive and slow, since Liv has no memory and therefore we have a really steep learning curve. It isn't until the end that we realize the significance of starting at the exact moment we did.
Overall, this was a really solid thriller, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun mystery/suspense read that has the same vibes as the movie Memento .
Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with STAY AWAKE scribbled on her arms in pen, a knife with blood on it, and no recollection of where she is or how she got there. All Liv remembers is two years ago, when she and her best friend lived together, and she worked at a culture magazine in New York City. Now, it's a new season, her apartment is owned by a new couple, and a man has been found dead with the message WAKE UP on the window in his blood...eerily similar to the print on Liv's own arms.
The book alternates between Liv's first-person POV and the detectives' third person POV, with 95% of the story taking place in a 24-hour period starting on a Wednesday at 3 a.m., as we follow Liv in her attempts to outrun the police while trying to regain her memory and, more importantly, to stay awake.
I listened to the audiobook ARC I received for this, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear Imogen Church's voice! She's personally one of my favorite audiobook narrators, after having heard her narrate Ruth Ware's Turn of the Key . I know some people don't like her style, as she tends to dramatize her readings, but I thought it worked really well here.
Once I passed the 50% mark, I couldn't put it down! Things started falling into place, and the time honestly flew by. I felt like the book really benefitted from alternating perspectives, adding to the unreliability of the Liv as a narrator. I loved that we were thrown right into Liv's perspective as she's waking up. It would be like watching 50 First Dates from Lucy's perspective instead of Henry's...if Lucy was a suspect for murder. We're finding things out as Liv does, supplemented by the detectives' findings in the POVs in almost every other chapter.
I could see this book being frustrating for some, especially because the beginning is a little repetitive and slow, since Liv has no memory and therefore we have a really steep learning curve. It isn't until the end that we realize the significance of starting at the exact moment we did.
Overall, this was a really solid thriller, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun mystery/suspense read that has the same vibes as the movie Memento .