theblackrabbit

Last year around this time I read and reviewed a galley of Chevy Stevens' debut Still Missing. Which was good and bad. Good because I loved, loved the book and bad because I couldn't really talk to anyone about it yet. I had to wait several months before my colleagues had a chance to read the book before I could discuss. Now I have the same dilemma with S. J. Watson's debut, Before I Go to Sleep. This, like Still Missing, is a moody, slow-building, psychological thriller that has you guessing right until the end and reading far too late at night. The bare outline of the book is this: Every morning Christine wakes with no memory of how she got where she is. The bed and room are unfamiliar, as is the man sleeping there next to her. As she stumbles to the bathroom she finds pictures of herself at various stages of her life and has no memory of them. The last memories she has are from when she was much younger and now she's looking at the face and body of a woman who is 47-years-old. How did she get to this point? And will she remember anything she learns today, tomorrow? As Christine struggles to make some sense of her life, she has two men in her life who are helping. Ben is the stalwart husband who has stuck with her since the accident that cost her her short term memory abilities, and Dr. Nash is the neurologist who is treating her without Ben's knowledge. All of this she learns piece by piece and as she records what's happening day to day in a journal, she is finding that all is not as she's been told. Great book.

2020-09-05 19:21