Synopsis:

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.

A complex thriller that unfolds at a breakneck speed, Stay Awake will keep you up all night.

Stay Awake is the third book I’ve read by the author Megan Goldin. I was intrigued by the description of a woman who loses her memory every time she falls asleep, and while the book was entertaining, I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as her previous two books, The Escape Room and The Night Swim.

“Starbursts blink from streetlights like they’re sharing a secret as I wake to find myself slumped in the back of a cab, without any recollection of how I got here, or where I’m going.”

Megan Goldin, Stay Awake

Goldin grabs our attention from the first line, planting the reader right in the middle of the action. She also manages to keep Stay Awake from growing repetitive despite the fact that Liv has to rediscover events from the past two years each time she falls asleep. She spends the novel fighting to stay awake, to figure out exactly how she’s involved in a murder and with a victim she doesn’t remember. The novel jumps between Liv’s point of view in the past and present, as well as the present point of view of detectives investigating the murder, until the two time lines finally converge toward the end of the novel. 

Goldin kept me guessing as characters and plot points were revealed, but I did feel a bit underwhelmed with the ending. There were a few things that were too coincidental for me, as well, and I often wondered how Liv was managing to avoid being found with the poor decisions she continued to make.

I feel like maybe Stay Awake could have been polished a bit more, but many other reviewers disagree with me, so it could also just be that Thillers are not my typical genre. I do tend to find it difficult to go from reading books where the reader is very connected with their main character to books with an unreliable lead. It’s definitely not what I read most often.