🎧ARC Review: Stay Awake by Megan Goldin

My review: 4.5⭐

A suspenseful, thrilling read! I was intrigued and engaged from the questionable beginning until the exciting end.

Liv wakes up with a note written on her hand that says stay awake, but has no memory of how it got there. Turns out she has a rare form of amnesia and her memory goes back two years if she falls asleep.

The confusion she faces, not knowing who to trust or where she lives or what’s going on at all, was so well written that you can’t help but feel empathy for Liv. Obviously she can’t stay awake forever, so there is quite a bit repetitiveness every time she wakes up, but I didn’t mind it too much, well maybe a smidgen. Although the puzzle pieces are put together rather slowly since Liv is ultimately living groundhog day over and over again, it still took on a fast pace and I was on the edge of my couch throughout the entire book.

It’s told in both Liv and Detective Darcy Halliday’s pov in the present and two years prior. This way gave us little tidbits that kept the story flowing nicely at a suspenseful pace. I felt that the current detectives, Halliday and Jack, did a much better job investigating than the ones prior. The others never took her seriously, but I suppose that would be hard to do when you’re reporting a carton of milk in your fridge that you didn’t place there. But did she truly put it there and can’t remember, or is there someone playing with her already fragile mind?

I was lucky enough to get a kindle copy and an advance audiobook to review. I went back and forth between the two. Ultimately, either way was great, but since I started off listening I enjoyed this way slightly better.

On the longer side at 11 hours and 59 minutes, easy to follow along at 2x. I was thrilled that there were 2 narrators ~ January LaVoy & Imogen Church. I am used to January’s voice as Detective Lindsey Boxer from the Women’s Murder Club series and fittingly she voiced the detective here. She did a lovely job as always. Imogen was overall fine. She spoke on the slower side, but I think it fit well what was Liv was feeling.

This is my 3rd book by Megan, which I think are all of them. I thoroughly enjoy her writing style and definitely recommend her for psychological thriller and wild ride lovers.

⬇Purchase links⬇

Book blurb: Release date ~ August 9, 2022

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. 

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