Review of Stay Awake by Megan Goldin

Love amnesia books? Love the 2000 cult classic film Memento? Then you’ve got to try this book. Check out my review of Stay Awake by Megan Goldin

Stay Awake by Megan Goldin

To be published on August 9 2022 by St Martins Press

Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy of the book for review.

As an Amazon Affiliate I may earn from qualifying purchases.

Synopsis: Liv wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. When she’s dropped off at the door of her brownstone, a stranger answers―a stranger who now lives in her apartment and forces her out in the cold.

Liv reaches for her phone to call for help, only to discover it’s missing, and in its place is a bloodstained knife. That’s when she sees that her hands are covered in black pen, scribbled messages like graffiti on her skin: STAY AWAKE.

Two years ago, Liv was living with her best friend, dating a new man, and thriving as a successful writer for a trendy magazine. Now, she’s lost and disoriented in a New York City that looks nothing like what she remembers.

Catching a glimpse of the local news, Liv is horrified to see reports of a crime scene where the victim’s blood has been used to scrawl a message across a window, the same message that’s inked on her hands. What did she do last night? And why does she remember nothing from the past two years?

Liv finds herself on the run for a crime she doesn’t remember committing as she tries to piece together the fragments of her life. But there’s someone who does know exactly what she did, and they’ll do anything to make her forget―permanently.

What Other Books Has Megan Goldin Written?

Megan Goldin published The Girl in Keller’s Way in 2017. In 2019, she made her mark with The Escape Room, a book blurbed by Lee Child. My husband loved The Escape Room, but I haven’t read it yet. In 2020, Golin released The Night Swim, a book that I found to be a tough read, but a good one, about a podcaster covering a sexual assault case in a small town. She also published Dark Corners, a sequel to The Night Swim, in 2023.

Review of Stay Awake by Megan Goldin

I have mixed feelings about amnesia books.

They were a HUGE trend in YA back in the day.

But I find that they are sometimes repetitive and start spinning their wheels OR have troublesome love triangles.

To me, the best amnesia books explore the function of memory in our lives and how much we rely on our memories to make us human.

Fortunately, Stay Awake was more a straight-up amnesia thriller in the vein of Memento, a 2000 cult classic film by Christopher Nolan that you can stream free (if you have HBO Max) or rent on Amazon Prime. It’s about a man trying to hunt his wife’s killer, but also struggling from short-term memory loss.

Stay Awake did feel a lot like Memento to me.

As the book opens, Liv is in a New York City she thinks she remembers: an apartment, friends, a job.

But Liv soon realizes that is remembering her life of two years ago, when a traumatic event erased her memory. Not only that, she has only short term memory that erases itself when she falls asleep.

Thus, the book’s title: Stay Awake. But because Liv can’t stay awake forever, she writes notes to herself all over her body.

Liv might be a murderer, she might be in danger … the book does a great job of keeping the reader guessing and creating a sense of paranoia and suspense.

Things did get to a point of repetitiveness where I was like, okay, enough already, but but overall I thought that Stay Awake was a solid thriller!

Have you read other Megan Goldin books? I’ve also reviewed The Night Swim and Dark Corners. Are you going to try this one? Talk to me in comments!