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    Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel
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    Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel
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    Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel
    Ebook415 pages6 hours

    Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel

    By S. J. Watson

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    New York Times Bestseller

    “An exceptional thriller. It left my nerves jangling for hours after I finished the last page.”  —Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Shutter Island

    “Imagine drifting off every night knowing that your memories will be wiped away by morning. That’s the fate of Christine Lucas, whose bewildering internal world is rendered with chilling intimacy in this debut literary thriller. . . . You’ll stay up late reading until you know.”  —People (4 stars)

    Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love–all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may be telling you only half the story. Welcome to Christine's life. Every morning, she awakens beside a stranger in an unfamiliar bed. She sees a middle-aged face in the bathroom mirror that she does not recognize. And every morning, the man patiently explains that he is Ben, her husband, that she is forty-seven-years-old, and that an accident long ago damaged her ability to remember.

    In place of memories Christine has a handful of pictures, a whiteboard in the kitchen, and a journal, hidden in a closet. She knows about the journal because Dr. Ed Nash, a neurologist who claims to be treating her without Ben’s knowledge, reminds her about it each day. Inside its pages, the damaged woman has begun meticulously recording her daily events—sessions with Dr. Nash, snippets of information that Ben shares, flashes of her former self that briefly, miraculously appear.

    But as the pages accumulate, inconsistencies begin to emerge, raising disturbing questions that Christine is determined to find answers to. And the more she pieces together the shards of her broken life, the closer she gets to the truth . . . and the more terrifying and deadly it is.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 14, 2011
    ISBN9780062060570
    Author

    S. J. Watson

    S. J. WATSON was born in the Midlands. His first novel was the award-winning Before I Go to Sleep, which has sold more than four million copies in over forty languages, followed by the critically acclaimed novel Second Life. S. J. Watson lives in London.

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    Reviews for Before I Go To Sleep

    4/5

    3,027 ratings348 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I picked this up somewhat on a whim. A couple of people had been talking about it, and I saw it in the Kindle store, and I just thought... fine, okay. I'll go for it. I read it in about four chunks. It's pretty riveting, actually. The unreliable narrator is reasonably well handled and as long as you're prepared to go along for the ride, it works reasonably well. I guessed the big twist fairly swiftly, then thought I'd got it wrong, and then it turned out my first guess was right. That was pretty fun, I suppose: the guessing game.

      One thing that annoyed me was a fairly big thing, though. The antagonist is a total cliché. The minute he starts talking about her being in a coffee shop, and how he scrutinised what she was eating and tried to figure out the "rules", the ending was obvious. It's every media stereotype. And seriously, I promise you. If you went out today, you passed a mentally ill person. Driving past you, walking along the pavement behind you, in front of you... And you were in no danger. They don't care about whether you eat your snack before or after 2pm. They're not going to rape you and try to kill you, then steal you from your care home and lie to you. They're just going to buy some bread and milk, maybe some things for dinner. They've got a meeting later. Whatever. Most mentally ill people are perfectly normal people. And even the ones that you don't understand, the ones that try to figure out weird "rules", they're probably harmless too. It's not that there aren't people who are dangerous and mentally ill, but mentally ill people are not automatically dangerous. In fact, mentally ill people are at a higher risk of being victims of violence, not perpetrators.

      Still, clichés aside, if you're interested in a mystery/thriller type thing that's basically a sinister 50 First Dates (I can't believe I'm admitting to ever having seen that), this might be up your street.
    • 4/5
      Interesting novel. I was strolling for a while through the bookshop, using my preferred method of selecting a new book: reading the first two paragraphs. :-) Before I Go To Sleep immediately grabbed my attention, and I wanted to read on. So I bought it.

      I was very much entertained with the story, and never stopped trying to figure out what was going on. When finally the plot came to an end, at first I was disappointed that I got it right... but how incomplete my solution to the mystery was! Watson really left me sitting still for a while after finishing the last page, pondering over things like memories, life and love. I like that.

      Well worth the read. Good thriller.
    • 5/5
      Intriguing plot that grips you straight from the very first line of text, twists and turns that keep you guessing all the way and an overall mind-blowingly clever and well-written psychological thriller that ranks up there with some of the best I've ever read.

      I love Sophie Hannah books and, to anyone else that loves her books and is devastated because they've read them all and have to wait for the next one, S.J. Watson's "Before I go to sleep" won't disappoint. I found myself having a constant internal dialogue, debating the plot developments and being torn between possibilities, never knowing who to trust in the storyline...and I kept thinking "I'm only the reader, how must this poor woman feel??" I found myself telling everyone about the book and, for days after finishing it, I kept plotting scenarios of 'what happened next' in my head.

      This book has it all...suspense, chilling psychological fear-factor and the sense that the story could continue in your own mind. An absolute must-read!
    • 3/5
      'Groundhog Day' for amnesiacs; instead of amassing knowledge, the protagonist in BIGTS makes each day anew. A really interesting central premise that's parsed-out well (although the pace drags a little through the middle section). There are tense plot twists along the way, and Watson wrings every ounce of mystery from his set up. *SPOILER ALERT* The disappointment is the end - rather than a Borges or Auster-like denouement, there's a Hollywood happy ending which gives the overall journey a rather pedestrian feel.
    • 5/5
      You can read the synopsis for yourself, so I won't reiterate. I will say that this is a page turner! Not a book you can read while part of your brain is on vacation, so if you're looking for one of those, keep looking. This is a very thoughtful and complex story that requires you to pay attention to details--I love books like this! There are clues dropped throughout that will help the reader to figure out what is going on, but again, if you speed through, you will miss them completely.
    • 4/5
      This mind-bending thriller is narrated by Christine, a middle-aged woman who lost her short-term memory in her twenties following a brutal attack. Every morning, she wakes up in a strange house, next to a strange man, and looks into the mirror shocked to see a middle-aged version of herself, and every morning the strange man has to explain that she is married and that she has suffered an injury. Unbeknownst to the husband, a doctor is encouraging her to keep a journal, phoning her every day to tell her where it is hidden, and that journal is the device that allows the book to have a coherent narrative. Through the journal, Christine comes to believe that her husband doesn't always tell her the truth about her past. Why is he lying, if indeed he is? Can she trust her doctor? Can she trust her own narrative? Watson, a male writer, does a great job in voicing a female character, and the empathy one feels for Christine puts a little meat on the suspense-tale bones. I gobbled it up and enjoyed the gobbling, although I will say that I disagree with those who found the ending a shocker, since I had it figured out about halfway through the book.
    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this original and different mystery thriller about a woman who, each time she wakes up, finds she has lost her memory and has no knowledge of what she has done the previous day, never mind the previous year. I found it a compelling and exciting read, very much a page turner.I was drawn into Christine's world right from the first page and what a scary concept it was! It was a thought-provoking idea and gave a good insight into the frightening effects of amnesia. I can quite honestly say I could not put the book down and I was eagerly turning the pages as it became apparent that all was not as it seemed. However, it is difficult to say too much without revealing the plot. The only quibble I had was with the ending - it was a little too neatly tied up for me.Suffice it to say I would highly recommend this book, as it had me totally hooked. It's a cracking good read. I am so looking forward to seeing how it adapts to the big screen, hopefully later on this year or early next.
    • 5/5
      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? Suspenseful from start to finish, the strength of Watson's writing allows Before I Go to Sleep to transcend the basic premise and present profound questions about memory and identity. A page turner from start to finish that turns into a wonderful thriller and mystery.
    • 5/5
      What if you woke up one morning and couldn't remember who/ where/ what/ when you were the day before? What if you woke up every morning just like that, with a stranger in the bed beside you, in a body that you didn't recognize? S. J. Watson builds on this compelling beginning to create a harrowing and suspenseful novel. You may find yourself on the verge of shouting warnings at the protagonist at critical moments. The narrator is a warm, likable, finely drawn middle-aged woman whose faults (she's a little silly, a lot prickly, and impatient sometimes, but wouldn't you be if your memories were as elusive as fairies?) will call out your empathy. Terrifying to read, and comes back to haunt you later, in a good "hmmm" way.Read this fantastic book via a free ARC at NetGalley.
    • 4/5
      Christine is a woman with a past--unfortunately one she can't remember. When she wakes up each morning she has to be told where she is, what's happened in the past twenty years, and who the people are in her life now. She starts remembering things and then the pattern changes. It's a mystery with a little suspense. Different than I thought it would be but I was hooked very quickly by the plot. Truly a page-turner and a fascinating story. I wish I didn't know what happened so I could read it again!
    • 4/5
      Wow, totally engrossing, read it in one afternoon.
    • 4/5
      Every morning Christine awakens with limited memories of her life.Sometimes she awakens thinking she is but a little girl in her childhood bedroom, other times maybe she's a teen. Sometimes she may see a man standing in her room and expect when he turns around she'll recognize her father. However the man in her room is always a stranger, and when she looks at herself in the mirror, she sees what she thinks is an old woman instead of a young girl. Christine suffers from a rare form of amnesia, causing her to lose her memory while she sleeps at night (think Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates). She awakens in the morning not knowing the man who sleeps beside her, or how she aged decades, or what has transpired during those decades.Christine keeps a journal hidden away, documenting what happens each day, what she learns of her past. Then one day she takes out her journal and it warns her not to trust her husband. Now she begins to question everything. Who can be trusted? Are these people who they say they are?My final word: I made a prediction on the second page of the story regarding how I thought it would end, and it turned out that I was essentially correct. However even though I knew where the book was going and my final destination, I kept reading to find out what kind of trip the author would take me on to get me there. It was interesting. Not fantastic writing, complex characters or breathtaking suspense, but an enjoyable enough fast read.
    • 4/5
      A great suspenseful story, a hard to put down read, with a twist for an ending I did not see coming. Very entertaining, fun, fast, and an easy book to read.
    • 4/5
      I couldn't put it down until I finished it. I enjoyed it but got annoyed with the ending, just seemed to get stupid towards the end.
    • 4/5
      This psychological thriller drew me in from the very first page. I could not put it down. The writing is deceptively simple and direct. And Watson had me guessing until the very end. My mind did back flips trying to figure out who the bad guy was. You wouldn’t believe one of the scenarios I came up with. You become that desperate to figure it out. And that was part of the appeal. The guessing. The wondering. You know it’s bad. Very, very bad. As her paranoia ebbs and flows, so does yours.
    • 4/5
      Wow, super good!! 4.5 stars except is ended too abruptly to me. I couldn't put it down and finished it in 1 day.
    • 4/5
      S.J. Watson's debut Before I Go to Sleep is a novel about forgetting, but one you won't soon forget. Main character Christine wakes up every day not knowing who she is, where she is, or who the man sleeping in bed beside her is. She wakes expecting to be in her early twenties (or younger) when, in reality, she's nearing fifty. The lines on her face and hands surprise her every time.Each night when Christine goes to sleep her memory is erased, reset; and each morning her husband, Ben, has to explain their life to her once again.After a violent accident years ago left her with amnesia, Christine is unable to remember things from day to day, leaving her entirely dependent on her husband.At her doctor's encouragement she starts a journal, writing down the day's events in a hope it will help jog her memory. But it's the words Christine finds on that journal one day, "Don't trust Ben," that leave both her and the reader guessing.Can Ben really be trusted? Can Christine's transcription of events? Is everything that happened to Christine as it's been portrayed? Is everyone as they seem?What has happened to her memory . . . and will it ever return?Before I Go to Sleep is a novel full of twists and turns. It starts off being an interesting tale of a woman who cannot remember her life and gradually yearns more and more to have it back (sort of the grown up cousin to Forgotten) and then becomes more of a psychological thriller. The reader is left guessing just how much there really is to this story that at first could have seemed so simple (simple but strange).The last big twist is one readers might figure out themselves a bit before it's revealed but that will only add to the suspense as you wait for the events to ultimately unfold.Before I Go to Sleep is a novel you will, likely, want others to read if only so you can discuss with them what they thought of it or ask them questions about certain parts--it's not a talk about it novel.It is also an adult novel. For YA readers: Mostly due to the general plot and content but also to a few instances in language/scenes of sex. There's also some coarse language - but probably less than most YA novels.I will be looking for more from S.J. Watson in the future.
    • 4/5
      gaaaaaah. this was super creepy, but in a good way.
    • 4/5
      Amnesia is a classic condition for a thriller. What would it be like to wake up every day and know nothing about who you are, what's in your past, where you live, your husband's name (assuming he is your husband), your age - everything up for grabs every morning. This is scary for a lot of reasons, including the level of dependency it would inflict upon its sufferers.S.J. Watson's debut thriller, Before I Go to Sleep, mines this territory for all its worth. The suspense is tightly woven, the writing is quite good, it all works in all the ways a good thriller should. Best of all, is the overwhelming sense of paranoia that the book creates from the very first words - a sense that ratchets up throughout the book until by the end you're still not really sure what is real and what's fabricated.Watson takes a familiar theme and turns out a well-written character study filled with suspense, paranoia, and pure terror. Be forewarned, once you start reading this you won't be able to put it down. I missed BART stops twice while reading this and had to get off and take the train back to my destination. Great read.
    • 4/5
      I rate this 4 1/2 stars.

      Imagine what it would be like to wake up everyday lying next to a stranger. A middle-aged man you don't recognize. When you look in the mirror you don't recognize the woman looking back at you because she is so much older than you are. Nothing around you is familiar. Absolutely nothing.

      This is what Christine's life is like everyday, until with the help of a doctor she starts keeping a journal.

      I initially thought that maybe the man she wakes up with was repeatedly drugging her in some way, or that maybe she was the victim of some sort of an experiment. My imagination was racing as the story played out. In the end, it was nothing so sinister, and yet in its own way it was more sinister than I had imagined.

      This story kept me on the edge of my seat and I could not put it down until I had read the entire thing. Very suspenseful, very gripping. I'll admit that I did figure out the twist in the plot quite awhile before it was shown, but I still really enjoyed the book and the ending.
    • 5/5
      I started on this book this morning and I already read the last page at 22.00 today. Needless to say I found this book impossible to put down. It grabbed me from the first page up to the very end. I definitely recommend it.
    • 5/5
      An astonishing debut; it is fantastic. Whilst I’ve read other 4 and 5 star books recently there aren’t that many that compel me to turn page after page after page. I feel it is a difficult book to review without giving away plot details to be honest. However I have to say I was stunned and thrilled with how the novel progressed.Christine (the narrator) forgets everything she knows once she falls asleep at night and on awakening rediscovers parts of her life all over again. Due to an accident her amnesia is complex and impacts upon her whole life. The reader learns about her life along with Christine and it is just absorbing you become involved in her vulnerability and discoveries. I can’t wait to see this as a film! The book is due to be released in April 2011 and it will be one I’ll be recommending all over the place. Superb!
    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed this book. Along the lines of many of the bestsellers such as Gone Girl and The Girl on The Train, this suspenseful thriller keeps you guessing at every turn. The writing has a tendency to be repetitive occasionally, mostly because of the way the plot is, having a main character with memory loss and regaining memories based on a diary, therefore it was pretty easy to overlook after a while. The ending was perfect for the story and let the reader make the conclusion that worked best for them. A highly suggested read.
    • 5/5
      Christine Lucas wakes up every morning with no memory of what happened yesterday, or the day before, or in many of the previous years of her life. When she sleeps her memory is virtually erased. Keeping a diary helps. She leaves a note to herself to read the diary, and then every morning after the shock of looking in the mirror and seeing someone so much older than she is looking back, she reads the words written in her own handwriting. She manages to cope from day to day with the loving help of Ben, her devoted husband. Imagine her shock when she opens her diary one day and reads the words … “DON’T TRUST BEN”.

      Although this scenario has been explored in other books and movies, in every style from comedy to thriller this book absolutely holds its own. Christine’s pain is tangible to the reader and we follow Christine side-by-side and step-by-step as she begins to unravel the mystery of her own diary. It’s hard to say any more without posting a spoiler alert at the top of the review. Before I Go To Sleep is well worth the reading time if you want to find out any more. I loved this book and would definitely list it among my favorite reads of 2011.
    • 4/5
      Before I Go To Sleep is both a suspenseful, intriguing page turner. But also a reasonably pedestrian, reasonably predictable unfolding of a premise. I enjoyed it, would recommend it, but it was nowhere near the level of spine tingling amazement one can get with a good book by Ruth Rendell, Harlan Coben, or many others.The book begins when a woman wakes up wondering who the man next to her in bed is. Then she learns that he is her husband, she has a peculiar form of amnesia that resets her memory every night when she goes to sleep, leaving her unable to remember anything before about college. So every day she has to start from scratch, learning her husband, her way around the house, forming new memories that get erased in the morning.The woman, Christine, meets with a doctor who hands her a journal she has been keeping of her memories over the previous several weeks. And then the suspense begins.The book feels workmanlike because the journal reads like a novel, the clues are obvious and surrounded with the literary equivalents of neon lights, and everything unfolds somewhat slowly and predictably. It feels like the author could have done more with his premise, the device of a journal, and the unreliability of memory.That said, it is still a page turner and leaves one fascinated about what life would be like if every day began from scratch.
    • 5/5
      I guess the premise of this novel is widely known by now, but in a nutshell the narrator Christine wakes up every day with no idea who she is, having suffered a trauma some years before that affected her memory. Everything she learns during the day, she promptly forgets overnight. I had a computer like that once, and it was mighty annoying, but this is probably some way worse.It must have been a challenge to write. Like Kate Atkinson's "Life after Life", there is a necessary element of repetitiveness about it, and I wondered how the author would deal with it. In the first chapter, we follow Christine as she wakes up, no idea where she is, and via a diary (that she initially doesn't know she has been keeping) finds out what is going on. Subsequently the waking up and being disoriented bit is dropped, to be assumed by the reader. As it should be, but as Christine reads her diary she feels less like the person who woke up with no memory, and more like someone who remembers everything. It was always going to work out that way, but it was hard to keep in mind that every day was like an individual lifetime to her. On the other hand, the author skilfully points out the implications of this medical condition that are not immediately obvious - the way it would be compounded by illness and infirmity. Having such a condition on the day of one's death. It was grim stuff.Whatever my misgivings about some bits of it (and one passage towards the end about who had whose telephone number and who couldn't get in touch with who nearly made me lose the will to live), this is a story that demands to be read to the end, and has a good twist that some will guess, but I didn't.
    • 5/5
      This title is a real nail-biter! Christine suffers from amnesia. When she sleeps at night, she wakes up not knowing who she is--or, worse, who the man next to her in bed is! With the encouragement of a psychiatrist, she begins to piece together her life before the trauma that took her memory. At his suggestion, she begins keeping a journal where she writes the things she remembers each day. Then in the morning, the doctor calls to remind her about the journal. At his suggestion she hides it from her husband--they are both not sure he can be trusted. The suspense ratchets up another notch each day Christine writes in her journal. This is a really frightening psychological thriller. There are some plot details and timeline issues that perhaps aren't exactly right, but the story sweeps the reader along so completely that we don't really care about such minor discrepancies. Yes, read it!
    • 5/5
      There is a lot of love out there for this novel. Despite the hype though, given the type of psychological thriller that it is, it was always going to be a book I’d read anyway.Christine wakes every morning to a man and house she can’t remember. After a horrific car crash she has severe amnesia, but she is unable to make new memories too; as she sleeps her brain wipes her experiences from that day clear away. Each morning she has to find herself again – her memory stops in her twenties, but she is now 47. She meets her long-suffering husband Ben who says he still loves her anew, and has to be told about her life yet again, piecing together enough to get her through the day.Christine is, unknown to Ben who would be against it, secretly seeing a doctor who thinks he can help her with her memory loss. Dr Nash asks her to keep a secret journal, and rings her each day to tell her about the book’s existence. Thus Christine begins to piece together bits of her life that she can’t remember and Ben doesn’t seem to want to tell her about – which is understandable as he has to do this every day after all. Doing this does start memory fragments appearing now and then, they raise so many questions, and Christine gradually starts to uncover the nasty truth about what really happened to her …That’s enough of the plot, except to say that it kept me guessing for ages, and the sudden realisation of what was going to happen in the end sent a cold chill through me! It kept me reading compulsively; if I’d been able to, I would have read it through in one session, but normal life intervened, but I was itching all that time to finish the book.If I had one criticism, it is that Christine’s journal entries are over-detailed. She wouldn’t have had enough time to read the ever-expanding book every day and to add to it in the time available. The gradual reveal through her journal entries was brilliantly handled though and as each new fact is uncovered, it makes the reader re-evaluate what they thought they knew – we’re with Christine in this voyage of discovery. There is a certain amount of reiteration, especially in the first half of the book, but like in the film Groundhog Day, (the only similarity!), each day is actually not quite the same as the one before.There are no author photos on the sleeve of this book, and the initials also give nothing away. I was really surprised to find that SJ is a bloke, as most of the psychological thrillers I’ve read have been by women; he captures Christine’s daily panic and increasing furtiveness really well. Christine’s waking up each morning feeling twenty-something and being confronted with an older body in the mirror makes us sympathize with her instantly (don’t we all secretly believe we’re still that young!).I really enjoyed this gripping psychological thriller, and it will be fascinating to see what Ridley Scott makes of it – he’s bought the film rights.
    • 3/5
      Christine does not remember most of her life. Every morning she wakes up next to a stranger who tells her he is her husband, Ben. Every day he explains to he that she has amnesia. And every night, when she sleeps, she forgets everything that happened that day, too. But then, at the urging of a doctor, she begins to keep a secret journal that provides her with an artificial memory of recent days. And sometime during those days, she's scrawled "Don't trust Ben" in the front of the journal.It's a fantastic setup for novel, the kind that promises creepy, slowly revealed secrets and deep emotional tension. Plus, the cover is plastered with blurbs praising how heart-stopping and nerve-jangling and page-turning it is. So I went into it looking to have my heart stopped and my nerves jangled, and such, and... it kind of didn't happen.The writing isn't great, but that wasn't really the problem. None of the big, surprising twists felt all that surprising, but I don't think that's the problem, either. The problem is that none of it felt real to me. And I don't mean the fact that amnesia just doesn't work that way. I was actually OK with that, after a line from a doctor about Christine's condition not fitting our current understanding of memory convinced me that the author wasn't proceeding from ignorance, but instead knowingly fudging the medical facts for the sake of the story. I was willing to go with that. It was everything else that bugged me. Stuff like the fact that Christine's doctor seems to have no patients but her to worry about and is free to spend big chunks of his work day dropping by her house and taking her on memory-jogging field trips. But the biggest problem was Christine herself. She just never felt emotionally believable to me as someone going through the things she's going through. She talks a lot about her thoughts and feelings, but it all feels sort of... hollow. I'm not sure I ever really believed there was a person in there. And without any deep sense of empathy for her, I was more irritated by her than concerned about her. Which made it kind of hard for my nerves to get tingly for her.
    • 3/5
      A woman wakes up in a strange room with a strange man in bed beside her. Racking her brains for memories of the night before she can only assume that this situation is the result of a drunken one night stand. Embarrassed, she goes to the bathroom where she discovers the face of a forty-seven year old woman looking back at her from the mirror, not the face of the woman in her early twenties that she believes herself to be. And the mirror is surrounded by pictures of her and the strange man, accompanied by little notes. 'Ben. Your husband' is written on one of them. And as her screams awaken Ben we have the answer to the riddle. Christine is indeed forty-seven and has been married to Ben for over twenty years. In her late twenties she was knocked down by a car and suffered head injuries which have affected her memory. Every morning she wakes up with no memory of anything that has happened since her early twenties, sometimes with no memory of anything since her childhood. While she can form new memories during the day, these are lost when she goes to sleep, and so each morning she faces the same shocking discovery.But is everything as it seems? Unbeknown to her husband Christine has been seeing a doctor with a particular interest in memory loss who has encouraged her to keep a diary, phoning her every morning to tell her of its existence. But as she reviews what she has written on previous days and for the first time starts to get some sense of continunity in her life she sees that there are discrepancies in the account of the past that her husband presents her with on a daily basis. Why does his story of whether or not they had children vary from day to day? Why does he tell her that she was not a writer when has evidence to the contrary? And why has she written in capital letters on the front of her diary: ' DO NOT TRUST BEN'.Overall, this was a reasonable read that passed the time, and I certainly wasn't ever tempted to stop reading, but it didn't grabbed me in the same way that it's grabbed many readers on LT. I suppose you'd call it a psychological thriller, and that's a genre which doesn't appeal to me as much as other genres, so the book has to work doubly hard before it starts. It's difficult to say what my issues were without giving away spoilers, but parts of the plot struck me as doubtful, although I didn't guess the final twist until nearly the end. So if this type of book is your thing, then I'd recommend it, otherwise I'm fairly neutral.