Stay awake

Review by Booklist Review

Liv Reese wakes up in a cab. She's disoriented. How did she get there? The cabbie drops her off at her apartment, which is inexplicably occupied by strangers. As though this weren't perplexing enough, Liv has things written on her hands (including the words "stay awake"), and she doesn't know why. Nor why she has a bloody knife wrapped up in a T-shirt. Elsewhere, a homicide detective arrives at the scene of a murder to find a man who was apparently drugged before he was stabbed to death. On his apartment window, the words "stay awake" are written in blood. The latest novel from the author of The Night Swim (2020) is a very interesting variation on the lost-memory theme. Goldin keeps piling on the questions (Why is someone else living in Liv's apartment? How has her workplace changed so much? Why have her bank accounts been closed?) until we're just as confused as Liv. Oh, and that murder victim: Was it Liv who killed him? Or are the words on the window a warning to her? Eventually Goldin answers these questions and many more, but only when she's ready, and good luck trying to figure out the answers before that. Misdirection has always been a key tool in her toolbox, and she uses it to perfection in this beautifully conceived and executed thriller.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This adrenaline-fueled thriller from Goldin (The Night Swim) opens with Liv Reese waking up early one morning in a Brooklyn-bound cab, though the last thing she remembers is working her Manhattan day job. Her skin sports myriad handwritten messages, including DON'T SLEEP! I FORGET EVERYTHING WHEN I FALL ASLEEP; she has cash, but no keys, phone, or wallet; and when she buzzes the apartment she shares with her roommate, strangers answer. Her pocket contains a bloody knife, which she tosses. Hours later, Liv wakes on a park bench, though the last thing she remembers is being at work. Back at the office, the staff and decor have changed completely. When a man calls asking where she put the knife, Liv assumes it's a wrong number--until the news reports a murder where the killer wrote WAKE UP! on a window in blood, and she panics. Goldin skillfully interweaves Liv's tense, propulsive present-day narration with chapters following NYPD detective Darcy Halliday's homicide investigation and flashbacks to two years earlier. Shocking twists and resourceful, well-drawn female characters keep the pages turning as the clever mystery unfolds. Goldin reliably entertains. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Co. (Aug.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Goldin follows up her edgy and much-appreciated The Escape Room and The Night Swim with Liv Reese waking up in a taxi she doesn't remember catching; thrust from her brownstone apartment, now inhabited by a stranger; and finding a bloodstained knife in her pocket and the words "STAY AWAKE" scrawled on her skin--the same message scrawled in the victim's blood at a crime scene. Even more confoundingly, she learns that two years have gone by, completely lost to her memory. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

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