Spoiler Discussion for Stay Awake

Did you read Stay Awake by Megan Goldin and are as hopelessly confused as the main character is? Do you need a Stay Awake plot summary, or the ending explained? Want to talk about the book? You are in the right place. Welcome to my Spoiler Discussion for Stay Awake!

Spoiler Discussion for Stay Awake

This Post will contain:

Full plot summary of Stay Awake by Megan Goldin

The ending of Stay Awake Explained

Who was the killer in Stay Awake?

Discussion of Stay Awake with spoilers

---

Plot Summary of Stay Awake

Note: Okay, I feel a bit like Liv because I wrote these notes a couple of days ago and now, reading over them, am still unclear about some things. I put my questions in italics.

---

Liv is in a taxi headed to her friend Amy’s apartment. She’s shocked to find a strange couple living there. They tell her she needs to leave.

Liv finds cash in her front pocket and a knife in the pocket of her sweater.  She throws the knife into a trash can, gets back in the taxi, and tells the driver to take her to her boyfriend Marco’s apartment. 

She notices she has written the words “stay awake” on her hand, plus the name and address of a place called Nocturnal. She asks the taxi driver to take her there instead.

The bartender at Nocturnal recognizes Liv. He tells her she was at the bar earlier with a guy, had a few drinks and left.

---

Detective Darcy Halliday arrives at a crime scene on East 53rd Sreett. A cleaning lady has found a body on the sixth floor, a stab victim with no signs of a struggle.

Detective Jack Lavelle also shows up with the scene. He says he and Halliday have been paired up on this case. Halliday tells him she thinks the killer was a woman. 

They search the trash and find a note that says “stay awake, don’t open the door, don’t answer the phone.” 

They also notice that the victim’s feet were slashed and that someone wrote “wake up” in blood on the window.

---

Liv wakes up on a bench in Washington Square Park. She recognizes the neighborhood. She goes to her usual salon, and though the stylist doesn’t recognize her, asks that her long hair be cut in her usual short hairstyle.

The Past: Marco is trying to wake Liv up. She’s a writer at Cultura magazine. He wants her to meet his investor Dean and Dean’s girlfriend Emily.

In the present, Liv goes to the Culture office and finally finds someone who recognizes her: Josie, who is happy to see her and asks about her life in London. Liv lies and says she’s been asked to work on a project at Cultura. 

From her new temporary office, Liv calls her bank but they said her account is closed. She realizes it’s November and the last memory she has is from July, two years back.

The Past: Liv is having lunch with Dean Marco and Emily. She feels bad because Dean gives the waiter Kevin a terrible tip. Kevin says he’s a fan of her Cultura column and Liv wonders how he knows who she is.

---

Halliday and Lavelle continue to work the case but still don’t know the identity of the victim.

A neighbor heard somebody leaving the apartment around 2 AM. Another neighbor saw a woman with dark hair coming out of the apartment earlier.

---

In the present, Liv gets a phone call from a man who says, “what did you do with a knife, Liv?” She freaks out and hangs up on him.

The Past: Liv and her editor Frank discuss a review she wrote about an artist named Milo Zee who painted a canvas with his own blood. A waiter named Kevin is persistently calling Liv.

---

In the present, Liv borrows some clothes from the Cultura closet.  She sees in the mirror that much of her body is covered with scribbles in ballpoint pen and finds a new scar just below her rib cage.

---

Halliday gets CCTV footage which shows someone leaving the murder scene in the middle of the night, but the footage is not clear. She also sees the victim enter the building with a woman with long dark hair.

---

In the past, Amy tells Liv that she’s going on vacation. Liv is staying at Amy’s and hears someone in the apartment.  She finds the window open, goes to sleep and wakes up to find the apartment ransacked.

She calls the police but they can find no sign of forced entry or a break in. They ask her if anyone’s been harassing her and she thinks of Kevin the waiter but doesn’t mention his name. 

---

In the present, Liv has found clothes to wear but is still thinking about the weird scar.

Liv calls Marco and an unknown man answers the phone and tells her she has the wrong number.

The Cultura receptionist tells Liv that a man called and asked her to stay in her office until he gets there. Instead, she heads to the building where the murders took place.

She follows the police into a shoe store where they are asking for CCTV footage.  She eavesdrops on the conversation and hears them ask the sales woman about a woman with long dark hair. 

The police are still trying to identify the victim.  They have also found fingerprints and more long dark hairs that they think belong to the killer.

Liv is shown a flyer by the police and she realizes she is the woman they are looking for. Dean, Marco’s investor, calls her mentions that he heard she moved to London.

---

In the past, Liv’s editor sends her to an art show preview. The show is by Q, a performance artist. She goes to the art show but the walls are empty. There’s a woman tied to a chair on a stage. She has butterflies tattooed on her shoulder. Liv is freaked out and leaves.

---

The crime lab calls Halliday and Lavelle and says they have a fingerprint match on a wine bottle from the murder scene. They match Liv Reese, a crime victim.

Halliday and Lavelle call the detective who worked Liv’s case and he tells them Liv was a murder suspect who wasn’t charged due to lack of evidence. He says she was either a murderer or a witness.

---

In the present, Liv is having lunch with Dean. She doesn’t like him but feels like she can pump him for information. He tells her he broke up with Emily. She mentions the murder. Then she freaks out and runs out of the restaurant.

---

Two years earlier, Liv catches sight of Amy and Marco in a restaurant. They don’t usually like each other but they look very friendly. Marco also isn’t a fan of Brett, Amy’s arrogant doctor boyfriend. Liv sits down at the table and sees a man at the bar watching her. After dinner Marco agrees to give Amy a ride home. Liv walks home and hear someone behind her.

---

In the present, the police discover that the security cameras in the back of the building were tampered with. Lavalle runs a search on Liv Reese and finds nothing in New York but a missing person report in London.

Halliday calls Scotland Yard to ask about Liv Reese and are told that she went missing three weeks ago. She is 31, a dual US-British citizen, and has a serious medical condition involving intermittent memory blackouts.

Liv has suffered these blackouts for two years, since the time she was almost murdered. If the person who tried to kill her finds her, they will kill her too.

---

Liv goes to Marco’s apartment and the man who lives there tells her she needs to leave or he’s going to call the police. She goes to Bellevue hospital to talk to Amy but they say nobody by that name works there.

A doctor named Brett recognizes Liv and says he will talk to her. But she runs away.

---

In the past, Liv is still convinced that someone keeps breaking into Amy’s apartment where she staying. The police tell her if she thinks she’s being followed she should keep a journal.

---

In the present, the police find that Liv flew from London to New York three weeks ago and  gave an address in Brooklyn. They go to that address and a woman named Angela answers the door and says that a strange woman showed up at three in the morning looking for Dr. Amy Decker.

---

Liv goes back to Nocturnal, but it’s closed. Someone in the neighborhood recognizes her and offers to take her to her apartment.

---

Scotland Yard calls and says that Liv was almost killed two years ago and ended up in a coma. Her memory blackout started five weeks ago. Every time she falls asleep, her memory resets to two years and three months ago, the time right before she was attacked.

---

In the present, a man calls Liv in her apartment and asks her where she put the knife. She says she doesn’t remember. She realizes he’s coming to the apartment so she escapes out the window.

---

The police finally think they have identified the murder victim: Edward Cole, an executive at Cultura magazine.

---

Liv finds a reminder card for a doctor’s appointment and decides to keep it. She calls Amy Decker’s mother who screams at her and suggests that Amy is dead and Liv is to blame.

---

The police visit Edward “Ted”  Cole’s girlfriend and she identifies his body. She said Ted was helping his ex girlfriend Liv Reese. Ted was worried Liv might be in danger because she was almost murdered and the killer was after her again. Ted’s girlfriend says that Liv called him constantly.

---

In the past, Liv still feels followed and stalked as someone is sending her creepy text messages. Amy suggests that Liv break up with Marco. Liv realizes that the person stalking her is Q, the performance artist. 

---

In the present, Liv shows up for her appointment with Dr. Brenner. He asked her why Ted did not come with her. He asked if she brought her journal. He refers her to a psychiatrist because he believes her problems are psychological.

---

Ted’s girlfriend tells the police that he had rented an air bnb “safe house” for Liv because he was worried she was in danger. 

---

In the past, Liv arrives at work. She gets a strange call from Amy telling her to come home to their apartment as soon as she can. She finds Amy and Marco in bed together, murdered. A man tells her they’ve been sleeping together behind her back. The man says he’s going to stage the crime as a murder suicide and blame Liv. He stabs her and flees but she calls the police and the paramedics arrive.

---

In the present, the police get the case files of the Marco/Amy murder. The investigating officer thought that they were holes in the murder-suicide story. The stab wound in Liv’s torso was done by someone right handed and Liv is left-handed. 

The detective suspects that the performance artist Zee,  whose exhibition Liv reviewed, might be responsible he had reinvented himself as Q. Liv had also filed a sexual harassment claim against a photographer. He also believe that Liv was being watched by a neighbor named Joe Chalmers.

---

Liv goes back to the Cultura office and her coworkers tell her that Ted is dead. She’s not even sure who that is. They tell her she and Ted were engaged.

---

The police question Joe Chalmers, a witness to the Beth/Marco murder. He says someone paid him to live in the apartment near Liv’s for a couple of weeks. His job was to “mess with” the woman living there. The man said he wanted to scare her. He also asked Chalmers to kill two people, but Chalmers refused. Chalmer says he heard the guy who hired him is dead. Why didn’t the police show Chalmers some photos of Ted, Marco, Brett, Dean … anyone who might have been this guy???

---

The police arrive at Cultura magazine and want to interview all the employees. Liv gets a phone call. A man tells her the police are coming after her but he can help her. Did she go with him?

---

Two days ago a man knocked on Liv’s door. He said his name was Ted and he could help her. He comes to take her to a safe house and asks for her journal. Okay, how did she remember this if her memory resets to two years back? Did she stay awake for two days?

---

The Ending of Stay Awake, Explained

Lavelle finds the murder weapon in a trash can.

---

Liv goes to Penn Station, but she falls asleep and misses her train. She finds a phone number written on her hand and calls it. The man on the other end says she is in danger and asks her to meet him at a bar called Nocturnal.

---

Two days ago, Ted told Lib that she did have some memories of the murders. Ted said they met when she moved to London, fell in love, and got engaged. Then he got offered a promotion to New York but she refused to move there. He now gives her cash, then gets a phone call and says he has to leave the apartment. The phone rings and someone on the other end says Amy needs Liv’s help and is at a bar called Nocturnal.

---

The police get a tip from the cab company that Liv was dropped off at Nocturnal on the night she arrived back in New York.

Liv is now also at Nocturnal. Someone at the bar hands over her missing phone. On it, she finds a text message from Ted saying he thinks he knows who killed Amy and Marco.

---

A handwriting specialist tells the that the person who wrote the message in blood on the window is not the same person who wrote the post-it notes.

---

Who was the killer in Stay Awake?

My List of Suspects:

Dean: unlikeable, though I couldn’t think of his motive. Maybe he lost money investing with Marco.

Kevin: he seemed a bit weird and keeps leaving Liv messages. Is this ever explained?

Performance Artist (Q or Zee): to me that seemed like a red herring.

A doctor. Strangely, this was my first thought, based on the fact that both Liv and Marco each had only a single stab wound. It seemed very precise. But I forgot that Brett was a doctor! I was blaming poor Dr. Brenner, the memory doctor.

---

The killer is Dr. Brett “God Complex” Graham, Amy’s former boyfriend. The older guy who seems a bit controlling and loves spoiling Amy. Guess he was NOT happy to find out that she was cheating on him.

Brett finds Liv at Nocturnal and says he’ll give her a ride home. In the car, staring at the distinctive fleur-de-lis pattern on his custom made shoes, a pattern Liv remembers from the night of the murder, Liv realizes that Brett is the one who killed Amy and Marco.

Liv texts an SOS message to the police. Brett tells Liv that Amy is waiting for her, but she tells him that she knows he killed Marco and Amy. Brett says he knew her memory would come back, so he also tried to frame her as the killer of Ted. And burned up her journal.

---

Halliday gets an SOS message and a location pin from Liv, who is headed to Queens with Brett.

Brett also killed Ted. He tells Liv that the one thing that incriminates him in Ted’s death is the knife and he wants to know where Liv put it. He’s the one who has been calling her asking about the knife!

Detective Halliday shows up and tells Brett to drop his weapon. But when he raises his gun, she shoots him.

The lab finds black paint at Ted‘s murder scene which matches paint under Brett‘s fingernails. Hmmm. Wash your hands, Brett!

---

Halliday and Lavalle visit Liv in the hospital. Liv tells them that she no longer loses her short-term memory when she falls asleep, but she still can’t remember the missing two years.

They tell Liv that Brett needed to get rid of Ted because he was asking questions about the Amy and Marco case. He injected Ted with a sedative, stabbed him, and framed Liv for the murder. They hope that the knife will help convict Brett.

A visitor arrives at the hospital to see Liv. It’s the bartender with the goatee from Nocturnal who tells Liv that his name is Harry.

Spoiler Discussion for Stay Awake

What did you think of this one? I enjoyed it while I was reading.

Now that I’m reading my notes, I realize that a lot of the characters (Q, Kevin, even Halliday with her mysterious past) were unresolved red herrings. Why did Kevin keep calling her? Why Zee/Q such a creeper because he was mad about Liv’s review for two years?

What other questions and comments do you have?