Before I Go To Sleep

by S J Watson

[brokentune]

Christine has an extraordinary problem: ever since a specific event, her memory is impaired so that she suffers amnesia every time she goes to sleep.
The next morning, she has to relearn her own life's story. Every single day.

When she finds a note in a journal that says "Do not trust Ben." things start to unravel.

Huh. So, this was a debut novel. A debut novel that kept me intrigued from the start to the very end, and made me consider whether I really needed to keep appointments today.

I did end up going out but regretted it half-way through my exercise in the park session, and was longing to get back to the book. That does not happen that often, even with the most gripping of mysteries.

There is not much that I can say about the plot or the characters without giving away spoilers. However, I really liked how the author fleshed out Christine, our MC. So much so, that I was under the impression that S.J. Watson was a woman. I only found out my mistake after I looked up what other books he had written.

While the characters were fantastically real, there were a few issues with the plot by way of loose ends and I also had a problem with the pacing of the novel - until it dawned on me that the repetitive writing emphasised the repetitive efforts of our MC to try and piece together the fragments of her own life every day to find out who she is and what happened to her.

I had several theories throughout the book but I am delighted to say that I was not able to see the solution until the last few chapters when I was literally sitting on the edge of my chair to find out what happened next.