Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson

“… We’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough, we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it.” -Dr. Nash, Before I Go to Sleep

My Personal Rating:

Before I Go to Sleep, one of the highly anticipated, engrossing psychological thriller novels arrived in 2011, penned by the debuting author by that time, S. J Watson.

This novel garnered numerous awards and consistently topped New York Times Bestseller. As I gather more info about the author, he wrote this novel during his shift while working on NHS (National Health Service) as an audiologist. He took the inspiration of this book from several amnesiac patients’ lives, and his reference mostly while writing this novel is Forever Today – A Memoir of Love and Amnesia by Deborah Weaving.

This psychological thriller novel is about Christine, a woman who is suffering from amnesia. She always wakes up lying with the person she does not know; she also has no recollection of anything that happened to her 20 years from her past.

This novel follows her as she tries to reconstruct her memories by noting them in a journal, with the guidance of Dr. Nash, a neuropsychologist researching brain disorders. He is helping her to recover the lost memories without Christine’s husband’s consent. The more she writes in her journal, the more secrets, lies, and betrayal are starting to unfold. Will she trust those people that surround her? Is her journal’s content telling the truth? Or is it just a figment of her imagination? How can she trust someone if she can’t even trust herself?

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP, S. J Watson’s novel is one of the compulsive, ambitious, puzzling, and surprisingly engaging psychological thriller fiction novels ever written. After reading this compelling novel’s premise, I am surprised that a man wrote this novel. Usually, in a story with a premise like this, I imagine a female thriller author with the likes of Gillian Flynn, Karin Slaughter, Shari Lapena, etc. written this.

Before I Go to Sleep is like I am reading a novel version of 50 First Dates, and the genre replaced by the flavor of Psycho. 50 First Dates and Before I Go to Sleep both tackle the issue of anterograde amnesia and their struggle to be that person. And the hardship of living with the person with that kind of problem. Aside from the topic of amnesia, it tackles the deeper meaning of individuality and the importance of memory.

This novel defies expectations. Even though it has a slow-burn approach, it is still engaging because of the well-paced plotting. It is noirish atmosphere creates a lot of gravity to this simple plot but splendidly well-written novel.

The mystery surrounding this book keeps you also drooling for more details. It keeps you perplexed about the unreliable narrator is writing in her journal. Is she writing for the fact on what she perceived? or is it her imagination playing with her? That question continuously buzzed until you realized piece by piece, the mystery is starting to unfold without you noticing it.

What is more ingenious about this novel is how it suppresses valuable details and then is revealed spectacularly. The revelation can be easily acknowledged in the mid part, and the foreshadowing is mostly directed at a specific character. It can’t be denied that it is genuinely addictive as you realized that your assumptions in the mystery are being matched on what climax is pointed to. You can observe that the last part of the novel is a bit rushed, but it does not take away the pleasure of savoring every moment of it, and it still manages to hit the mark even we are baffled by a conclusion.

If you are looking for a dark, twisted, mysterious, and irresistible thriller book to read for this month, look no further because Before I Go to Sleep is the right one for you.