Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson

Genre: Psychological Thriller/Fiction

Date of Publication: February 7, 2012

Memorable Quotation: “I feel like I ought to ask more questions, ought to show more interest, but there is little point.  Anything he tells me now I will have forgotten by the time I wake tomorrow. Today is all I have.” (pg.30)

Lasting Impression: An electrifying novel of an amnesiac who plays both the detective and the victim as she tries to discover her memories and the secrets they hide about her past.

Storyline: A

Pace of Story: A+

Characters: A

Ending: A+

Overall Grade: A+

Memories: they define us.  Who are we without our memories? Who can we grow to be without remembering our experiences to learn from?  For most, these questions cannot be answered because not until we become elderly do we have to worry about them.  For forty-seven year old Christine Lucas, however, she wakes up every morning not remembering anything; rebuilding them throughout the day only to have them erased as she sleeps.

The cause of her rare kind of amnesia is due to by a terrible incident that happened twenty years before.  To help her find her memories that she believes are still in her mind but have been suppressed, she takes her psychologist’s recommendation to write about her daily events in order to remember what had occurred and hopefully something would stay in her memory for more than a few hours.  Before we begin our journey through Christine’s written memories, we are confronted with three words that immediately give the readers a jaded view of Christine’s husband: DON’T TRUST BEN.  As we begin to read and understand Christine, the reader must ask: Are these three simple words just a way to mess with the reader’s sense of who to trust, as Christine would feel, or is this really a beacon of light that will help us see through the darkness that falsities have brought into Christine’s world and mind?

The story itself is incredible, and the amount of detail Watson puts into Before I Go to Sleep makes it hard to believe this is actually his debut.  From the first page, I was immediately sucked into the story and had a difficult time putting it down.  Watson has a wonderful way with words, arranging them to create emotion and sound in ways visual aid would normally be needed to express.  Christine’s journal is also broken up well, with interruptions to the flow and breaks that make it sound more realistic.  (I wish he would have used a different font for the journal entries but that is only a minor criticism.) 

What really made this novel stand out more than any psychological thriller I have ever read was the amount of twists Watson was able to incorporate into the storyline and not lose the reader in the chaos that he creates.  Not only does he do well keeping the reader’s attention with the twists to the story but more importantly, he has Christine roll with the punches her memory brings her as it slowly returns and the missing pieces of her life finally reappear, and the epiphanies they bring will continuously blow the reader’s mind. 

For such an intense novel, there had to be a powerful ending to conclude it properly, and Watson does not disappoint.  The ending is exceptional, tying everything together with a neat bow.  After everything is said and done, you may find yourself almost exhausted and with a slight headache from everything that had happened, but it will be worth the journey. Before I Go To Sleep left me with chills, even a day after I had finished it, and has left a chilling question stuck in my head: If you can’t trust your memories, who can you trust?

~Shelly-Beans