Sometimes I’m all about buying new books with reckless abandon. Other times, ShopDisney has wicked seasonal sales, and I have to make a choice: a stack of new books or a bag full of sweet Disney merch. When I choose the latter, I actually have to read those aforementioned books, instead of just hoarding them like it’s my day job.
Which brings us to the subject of this column: S.J. Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep, a backlist novel I’ve been meaning to read for an embarrassing amount of time.
Before I Go To Sleep is a mystery thriller with an insidiously slow burn. It’s like the funhouse version of Adam Sandler’s 50 First Dates: girl meets boy, they fall in love and get married, girl is the victim of a tragic accident that leaves her a permanent amnesiac who is horrified to wake up to the man she loves (a virtual stranger to her!) every morning thereafter. It has the ingredients to be an awkward, lopsided love story filled with courage, heart, and poetic realizations about the human condition— but it’s actual nightmare fuel.
Plot summary
Christine wakes up every morning in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar man. She looks in the mirror and sees an unfamiliar, middle-aged face. And every morning, the man she has woken up with must explain that he is Ben, he is her husband, she is forty-seven years old, and a terrible accident two decades earlier decimated her ability to form new memories.
Every day, Christine must begin again the reconstruction of her past. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more unbelievable it seems.
Worth reading?
Yes, especially if you’re new to thrillers, or a casual fan of the genre. People who gobble up thrillers like candy and/or use true crime podcasts as a lullaby might disagree, but I fall somewhere in-between those two categories, and I enjoyed it. If you’re not sure, the library is a great, noncommittal way to check out this book. Before I Go To Sleep is the type of novel that’s not so much tightly-packed and twisty, but rather, an insidiously slow burn with a decent (if absurd) ending.
Flaws
My problems with this novel feel a little bit nitpicky: it’s a tad repetitive (but duh, Christine is an amnesiac. Of course she’s going to have the same realizations as if they’re epiphanies she’s reached for the first time, over and over), the author had a mild but totally noticeable fixation on his character’s breasts (every time Christine examined her body or lamented about being unrecognizable, her breasts were brought into the equation. I almost turned it into a drinking game).
I enjoyed my time reading Before I Go To Sleep, but I’m not overly-passionate about it one way or the other, which is probably not a great sign. If you’re on the fence, it’s worth noting that there’s also a film based on this book, so you might just want to stream that instead.
Rating
3/5
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