When Liv Reese looked at her hands, she saw the writing. Across her knuckles, the ink says Stay Awake. She wrote on her hands as a kid, a bad habit her mother had tried to stop. But there are messages all over her hands now, and Liv doesn’t know why.
She awakes suddenly in the back of a cab and tells the driver the address of her apartment. Liv doesn’t have her purse or her phone with her, and she doesn’t remember right off where she had been. Fortunately she finds some cash in her pocket for the cab. But when she gets to her apartment, her roommate isn’t there. It’s strangers, and they live there. They have lived there for quite some time.
Liv decides to try her boyfriend Marco next, but she notices the name of a bar written on her arm, so she has the cab take her there instead. At the bar, Nocturnal, the bartender recognizes Liv and tells her that when she falls asleep, she loses her memory. That’s why she almost never sleeps, and why she was so exhausted that she fell asleep in the cab.
Liv stays at the bar as long as she can, and then she finds herself a park bench, since she still doesn’t have her purse or phone, and she doesn’t know what’s going on. But when she wakes up again with a start, she is surprised to find herself in the park. And she’s surprised that it’s cooler than she expected. Last she remembers, it was mid-summer, but the leaves are falling off the trees and there is a chill to the air.
Liv decides to try her office. As a features writer for Cultura magazine, she could go to her desk and check her computer. Maybe that would help her remember something. And when she gets there, everyone is really happy to see her. But they’re also surprised, because they hadn’t seen her since she moved to London two years ago. Still, they include her in a planning meeting and set up a makeshift office for her with a laptop. And while they all stop to watch a news report about a brutal murder that had happened, where the killer had written “Stay Awake” in the window, Liv is distracted by a phone call. The man on the phone doesn’t identify himself, but he knows Liv. He says he’ll come to the office to pick her up, which makes her nervous. And then he asks if she still has the knife.
She hadn’t said anything about the knife. When she woke up in the cab, Liv had a knife in her pocket. It was wrapped in a towel and covered in blood. She had thrown it away. But who was she talking to on the phone? And how did he know about the knife?
Meanwhile, the detectives are working the murder. They’re collecting evidence, running fingerprints, checking CCTV footage. And they have found a woman who they think entered the building with the victim and slipped out the back, Liv Reese. Interpol has a yellow alert out for her. The detectives learn that two years ago, she was the victim of attempted murder and now suffers from a condition where every time she falls asleep, her memory resets to two years ago, before the attempt on her life. She had moved to England after she recovered and had been living successfully despite her memory issues. But several weeks ago, something set her off, and she had disappeared from their radar.
Now Liv’s back in New York City. And she’s back in danger.
Stay Awake is the latest thriller from Megan Goldin, and it is full of twists and surprises. Told in parallel stories of past and present, readers go along for an increasingly tense ride as Liv in present day tries to figure out what happened to two years of her life and past Liv is slowly driven mad by someone or something. It’s a struggle to figure out what is real and what is sleep-deprived delusion, and to piece together what this woman has been through. But the skill of storytelling is strong, and it is fascinating to watch this story unfold.
I am mesmerized by this novel. When I started reading it, I thought it was going to go in a very different direction, all typical and obvious for a thriller called Stay Awake. But then it took a left turn. And then it took a detour. And suddenly I was in a very different world than I expected, and it was stunning. There is so much going on behind the scenes in this novel, and the way the curtain is raised to reveal the answers is nail bitingly slow. But it is amazing, as the secrets start to come to light, as the pieces of the puzzle get put into place, and I found myself all tied up in knots as I read it. If you are looking for a truly inventive, original thriller, then don’t go to sleep. Stay Awake.
Egalleys for Stay Awake were provided by St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.
