Before I Go To Sleep: A Review

Memories define us.

So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep?

Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love - all forgotten overnight.

And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story.

Welcome to Christine's life.

Having picked this up off of a charity shop shelf and reading the description I knew that this book was right up my street. 

Christine is the central character in this book, and it is from her perspective and narrative through which this story is told.  She awakes in her forties and cannot retain any information or memories; each day is like a blank sheet of paper and she is reliant on her husband to fill in the missing pieces for her.  As the story continues Christine slowly learns of how she came to be this way, who the people are around her and exactly how she lives her life.  We learn all these details the same time as Christine, piecing together her story with her.

The story is told in diary style format, but is this I think that is what threw me and has made me lose the initial excitement I felt about this book.  The perspective in this book is all off for me, one minute the story seems to be told in real time with details of conversation etc, then the next it seems like all these details are being written down in her diary, which although not massively confusing, for me kind of ruins what should have been an amazing piece of literature.  I understand where the author was coming from and how it must be extremely difficult to write a story in such a way, effectively telling the same details over and over, but I think the perspective could have been better formatted and less focus given on it being in diary style.  Naturally this diary is important to the story line as it is the journal she keeps that help her rebuild her memories every day, but like I said, I think, had it been a different author it could have been done a little better.  That being said, this is the author’s very first novel, so I think I can forgive them.

I did love the premise of this story and you really do feel for Christine and sense the anticipation and anxiety building as everyday you hear the lies told to her and ever changing stories of her life and so wish for someone, anyone to just tell her the truth.  The point at which it all starts unravelling is when it really grips you and I found that I just had to find out what really was going on here.  The ending was good, but wasn’t exactly something that you didn’t have an inkling of as you were going along, but none the less it definitely did not disappoint.

Generally this book is definitely worth a read especially if you liked Room by Emma Donoghue (which by the way is an amazing book), as it follows the same kind of narrative.

I give this book:

You can buy the book on amazon here, and check out the author S J Watson here.

p.s. I edit all my pics with PicMonkey.

Stay Sexy,