While You Sleep

While You Sleep by Stephanie Merritt  389 pages    I read a galley - book due out 3/5/19

So you think you know psychological thrillers? Think again. This story starts with a chill and never warms up, and combined with a steadily increasing pace and an unreliable narrator, is a book that will stay in your mind long after you've finished the last page.

Zoe Adams has left her husband and son for a bit of a break, choosing a remote Scottish island for her refuge. The McBride house appears to be a peaceful retreat...until the first night Zoe is there and in the throes of a dream, is sure someone is in the house. And is she hearing singing?  This is the beginning of a series of disturbing events, when Zoe feels she is being watched, especially at night. But if she is alone in the house, how does she explain the sounds? And the increasingly erotic and disturbing dreams she is having? The locals believe the McBride house holds echoes of its dark past, but is there a real person behind what has been happening to Zoe? Is this a ghost story or something much more sinister?

This is the perfect kind of disturbing, unsettling story for readers who like A.J. Finn's The Woman in the Window and books by Claire MacIntosh and Ruth Ware. Basically, if you like unsettling stories that may be ghost stories (or may be a story of paranoia) mixed with a bit of erotica, this is your book.

I found myself constantly surprised by this story, wondering if Zoe is an unbalanced person, or just someone suffering from some kind of grief, and also wondering just what the hell is happening in the McBride house. Is there a dark force in the house that is at work and responsible for the strange things happening to Zoe? What about the locals? The man who owns the house seems nice enough, but he's nervous when he's in the house. The man who owns the bookshop has done a lot of research on the McBride family and he seems to have a feeling of what's happening to Zoe, especially when she uncovers a diary and brings it to him.  But the real question I kept asking myself wasn't whether or not some of the local people were to be suspected, but if Zoe was in her right mind. I found her an interesting character: sympathetic, yet prickly enough at times to be irritating. She's clearly believing what she's hearing, seeing and feeling ---- but as a reader, you start to wonder if some of this is just in her mind.  By the time I reached the end of the book, I still wasn't sure.  I actually put the book to the side for a few days before writing this post because I couldn't figure out what to say about the book.

Definitely an interesting read and a story that stuck in my mind!

Sometimes I Lie

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney  258 pages    read a galley

My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 
1. I’m in a coma. 
2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 

3. Sometimes I lie. 


This is how the book starts. You know right away that you can't trust this narrator . . . and I loved that. When you begin the book, Amber is in a coma, although she can hear and smell things. The people around her have no idea that she can hear things at all, so while she can't speak, move or open her eyes, she can still observe things (kind of). She doesn't remember what happened to her, although she's suspicious that her husband is involved. And maybe her sister.

The story alternates between the present, where Amber is in a coma, the week before her accident, and through a series of childhood diaries from 20 years ago.  This is a psychological thriller to the core, and the entire time you're reading, it's easy to forget that #3 is "Sometimes I lie."  Are these diary entries true?  You think you know what's happening, or what the timeline is . . . but seriously, I was thrown off a few times and then there's a huge twist at one point.  This is a strange book, but I found it completely engrossing.