Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson

This book is a thriller and a very good one. Christine wakes up every day with no idea who she is or where she is. Every day her husband, Ben, has to explain to her why she can’t remember anything. She had an accident that left her brain damaged. It took her years to recover and she is still only remembering what happens up until she falls into a deep sleep. Then her mind essentially resets and she is back to square one. Some days Christine gets flashes of memory and knows certain things that happened in her past. She is contacted by a doctor and together they are determined to help her memory get stronger and remember more.

Christine as a character is unusual in that you are reading the story and she knows as much as you do. In fact, as the days go on, she sort of knows less than you. It’s an interesting way to narrate a story. There are some things you read over and over again due to Christine’s illness but the explanations get shorter so it’s not too annoying. You don’t properly get to know the other characters in the book as Christine is meeting them for the first time every day and you are stuck in her head. However, this does help with the ‘thriller’ part of the story.

The book is told in two different ways. The first part is waking up with Christine and learning who she is with her. The second part is Christine reading a journal, so is written as separate entries. The third part goes back to being inside Christine’s head. Really, this is the only way to tell the story, as she has no idea what is going on. One day isn’t really long enough to discover who you are and work out who everyone else is and who these people are that you keep having visions about. That takes weeks to figure out. Although, having said that the book is just set over one day, with the journal as bringing you up to speed on what has happened for the past twenty years.

I did like this book and would like to read it again at some point now that I know what happened to Christine. I’d like to see if there are clues that you can pick up on if you know what to look for. I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes a good mystery and likes to be scared. For the last 60 or so pages I just couldn’t put it down. I had to know what was going to happen. As I so desperately wanted to know I was guessing, rather than let the story take me there by itself. I did figure I out just before Christine which made the whole thing worse because then I really needed to finish the book and make sure the characters I wanted to survive did so. A gripping read and I hope there are more like this to come from the author.

Overall rating 4 out of 5.