The Cephalopod Coffee House - Before I go to Sleep

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Cephalopod Coffeehouse, whereby we get together and post about the best book we've finished over the past month while visiting other bloggers doing the same.  In this way, we'll all have the opportunity to share our thoughts with other enthusiastic readers.  Please join us by clicking on the pic to see the other participants.

Today I'm going to tell you about a book I stayed up way too late to finish.

Every day Christine wakes up not knowing where she is. Her memories disappear every time she falls asleep. Her husband, Ben, is a stranger to her, and he's obligated to explain their life together on a daily basis--all the result of a mysterious accident that made Christine an amnesiac. With the encouragement of her doctor, Christine starts a journal to help jog her memory every day. One morning, she opens it and sees that she's written three unexpected and terrifying words: "Don't trust Ben." Suddenly everything her husband has told her falls under suspicion. What kind of accident caused her condition? Who can she trust? Why is Ben lying to her? And, for the reader: Can Christine’s story be trusted? At the heart of S. J. Watson's Before I Go To Sleep is the petrifying question: How can anyone function when they can't even trust themselves?

 I don't know what to say about this book except that I was pretty much riveted from the start, in large part due to the fact that I couldn't guess how things were going to play out which made me keep reading one more chapter until there wasn't enough to savor for the next night. If you like literary thrillers, then I highly recommend this.

My only complaint might be that I didn't love or hate any of the characters. Christine seemed vague, which made it hard to connect with her. But then again, why wouldn't she seem that way when she doesn't quite know who she is any more? Regardless, I still recommend this book because any book that can keep me up all night is doing something right.