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Before I Go To Sleep is an excellent psychological thriller. I found myself reading this book into the small hours, and really had to tear myself away from it and go to sleep. It’s an unmissable read and I can’t recommend it enough.
The book is based around Christine, who loses her memory when she goes to sleep and has to start afresh everytime she wakes up. It’s quite thrilling seeing it from her own eyes as each day she wakes up and can’t figure out where she is, and everything has to be explained to her by a man who carefully explains to her that he’s her husband. She begins to keep a journal, writing down what happens to her each day as recommended by her doctor who calls her each day to remind her of her journal and where it’s hidden. Each day she reads what’s previously written in her journal, and is extremely confused as she can never remember the previous entries.
As the book progresses you begin to realise something isn’t right, and you know who it must involve but you can’t figure out why. I had to keep reading to find out what was going to happen next, and it was a brilliant read. I highly recommend this book!
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I honestly can’t gush enough about this book. This is the best debut novel I have ever read – the kind of thriller that gets under your skin and crawls into bed with you at night, refusing to let you shut your eyes until you read just one more page…just one more page….
The premise is a very interesting one. Christine wakes every morning in a strange bed next to a strange man, with no recollection of how she got there. But the bed is her own, and the man is her husband – and when she looks in the mirror she is somehow twenty years older than she had expected. Thanks to an accident when she was 29, Christine goes to sleep every night and has her memory erased. (Yes, this does sound like 50 First Dates, but I assure you that this storyline is darker and more thrilling than a RomCom!) Her loving husband patiently explains her situation to her every day, and her doctor tries to unlock whatever is keeping her memories hostage in her brain. I don’t want to give too much away aside from that, but needless to say it emerges that not everyone is telling Christine the whole truth.
This book had me absorbed from the very first chapter. You are immediately drawn into Christine’s situation, experiencing her confusion, and imagining yourself in the same nightmare. I don’t get as much opportunity to read during the week as I would like, but I managed to read this in two and a half days because I was glued to it. I disagree with the reviewers who said the ending was a little too neat – I sat gasping and exclaiming for the last 60 pages or so, having heart palpitations as the story came together. An absolute must-read and a fantastic achievement for the author – I believe the film rights have already been sold.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme(What’s this?)
The central character of this haunting first novel is Christine, a woman who wakes up each morning with her mind trapped years in the past, and no recent memories with which to make sense of her world. Each day she must be told that the man she is living with is her husband, and so much more about her life since her memories stopped, and each day, relive the heartbreaks and some of the happy moments as if they were happening anew. Gradually, with the help of a doctor, Christine manages to reconnect some of her past life using a journal to record what she knows about her life, and the writer cleverly puts the reader into the position of Christine, as she reads this journal and tries to make sense of the present in the context of her past. Our memories are an integral part of who we are, and the way we connect one day with the next. Without them, life is bleak, disconnected and confused. The writer really does convey the tragedy of amnesia very well, and on top of this has created a cleverly structured and menacing thriller. The pages turned quickly and easily and although the twist in the plot is perhaps relatively easy to guess it still feels shocking when it is revealed. An excellent first novel which I thoroughly recommend.
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I could not put this one down!,
Before I Go To Sleep is an excellent psychological thriller. I found myself reading this book into the small hours, and really had to tear myself away from it and go to sleep. It’s an unmissable read and I can’t recommend it enough.
The book is based around Christine, who loses her memory when she goes to sleep and has to start afresh everytime she wakes up. It’s quite thrilling seeing it from her own eyes as each day she wakes up and can’t figure out where she is, and everything has to be explained to her by a man who carefully explains to her that he’s her husband. She begins to keep a journal, writing down what happens to her each day as recommended by her doctor who calls her each day to remind her of her journal and where it’s hidden. Each day she reads what’s previously written in her journal, and is extremely confused as she can never remember the previous entries.
As the book progresses you begin to realise something isn’t right, and you know who it must involve but you can’t figure out why. I had to keep reading to find out what was going to happen next, and it was a brilliant read. I highly recommend this book!
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|A Fantastic Debut,
I honestly can’t gush enough about this book. This is the best debut novel I have ever read – the kind of thriller that gets under your skin and crawls into bed with you at night, refusing to let you shut your eyes until you read just one more page…just one more page….
The premise is a very interesting one. Christine wakes every morning in a strange bed next to a strange man, with no recollection of how she got there. But the bed is her own, and the man is her husband – and when she looks in the mirror she is somehow twenty years older than she had expected. Thanks to an accident when she was 29, Christine goes to sleep every night and has her memory erased. (Yes, this does sound like 50 First Dates, but I assure you that this storyline is darker and more thrilling than a RomCom!) Her loving husband patiently explains her situation to her every day, and her doctor tries to unlock whatever is keeping her memories hostage in her brain. I don’t want to give too much away aside from that, but needless to say it emerges that not everyone is telling Christine the whole truth.
This book had me absorbed from the very first chapter. You are immediately drawn into Christine’s situation, experiencing her confusion, and imagining yourself in the same nightmare. I don’t get as much opportunity to read during the week as I would like, but I managed to read this in two and a half days because I was glued to it. I disagree with the reviewers who said the ending was a little too neat – I sat gasping and exclaiming for the last 60 pages or so, having heart palpitations as the story came together. An absolute must-read and a fantastic achievement for the author – I believe the film rights have already been sold.
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|Memorable and chilling – an excellent psychological thriller!,
The central character of this haunting first novel is Christine, a woman who wakes up each morning with her mind trapped years in the past, and no recent memories with which to make sense of her world. Each day she must be told that the man she is living with is her husband, and so much more about her life since her memories stopped, and each day, relive the heartbreaks and some of the happy moments as if they were happening anew. Gradually, with the help of a doctor, Christine manages to reconnect some of her past life using a journal to record what she knows about her life, and the writer cleverly puts the reader into the position of Christine, as she reads this journal and tries to make sense of the present in the context of her past. Our memories are an integral part of who we are, and the way we connect one day with the next. Without them, life is bleak, disconnected and confused. The writer really does convey the tragedy of amnesia very well, and on top of this has created a cleverly structured and menacing thriller. The pages turned quickly and easily and although the twist in the plot is perhaps relatively easy to guess it still feels shocking when it is revealed.
An excellent first novel which I thoroughly recommend.
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