Blurb
You wake up to find the man beside you is dead.
He is not your husband. This is not your bed.
What do you do?
Tara Logan lives a quiet life with her husband, Noah, and two children, teenager Rosie and eleven-year-old Spencer.
But her peace is shattered when she wakes in her neighbour Lee’s bed, with no memory of how she got there or what happened between them.
And worse – he has been stabbed to death.
Convinced she didn’t kill Lee, Tara stays silent, fearing the truth will rip her family apart.
But as her daughter spirals out of control, and her husband becomes increasingly distant, Tara soon realises that someone in her life knows what really happened to Lee. She must get to the truth before they do.
Tara made a mistake … but will one night cost her everything?
Review
While You Were Sleeping by Kathryn Croft is a fast paced thriller. I decided to read the book due to the cover and the blurb which I really liked. The prologue was enough to get me glued to the story. The story begins when Tara goes to visit her neighbor. Hours later, she wakes up naked in his bed. Lee is lying next to her but he is dead. Tara makes the decision to run away from the scene and keep her discovery a secret.
The investigation soon focuses on her family as secrets begin to unravel. It is clear that everyone is lying. At this point, I suspected everyone including family members, the neighbors and my own neighbors (just kidding) and even the detectives. Everyone had something to hide and so the list of suspects was long.
The book started off strong for me and I couldn’t wait to see how it would go. There were so many possibilities in terms of suspects. Each time the detectives made a new discovery, I thought we were close to solving the mystery. In addition, each new revelation pointed at a new suspect. I was also nervous about Tara’s secret wondering if it would be discovered that she was in Lee’s bed the night that he was murdered.
The characters in this book were mostly unlikeable although this worked out well in the story. I didn’t like Rosie’s personality. She was a compulsive liar and quite selfish. However, I do like an unreliable narrator. Her lying habit made it hard to trust her. She kept telling tales and retracting them and telling new ones. I actually liked this because it kept the mystery alive and added to the twists. I didn’t like Tara’s character but I was intrigued by the fact that she had no memory of that night when Lee was killed. I kept wondering whether she was faking it or perhaps she did something that she can’t remember. This angle made things more interesting. I mean, the only possible witness to the crime had no idea what happened. I can’t talk about the other characters without spoiling the book but there were a lot of unlikeable but interesting characters including some nosey neighbors.
The book definitely had a promising premise. However, there were a few issues that dI didn’t really like. For instance, there is a relationship that starts at the middle of the investigation that seemed quite pointless. It didn’t make sense to me and I sort of felt like it was unrealistic given the circumstances. There were also chapters that were a bit too slow and felt repetitive. In addition, things were rushed in the sections that I was interested in like the part about Tara’s secret right before the second part of the book. I am obviously not a detective but there were aspects of the investigation that seemed unbelievable like how Tara left no forensic evidence in Lee’s house that night. It seemed like the whole investigation was hinged on instincts, witnesses and confessions and all three turned to misleading a couple of times.
Nevertheless, the last chapters were captivating. I had such a long list of suspects but the one person that never even crossed my mind ended up being the villain. In addition, the person was so twisted, dark and psychotic in ways that I never could have guessed. I definitely liked that twist and the ending.
I recommend While You Were Sleeping by Kathryn Croft to fans of psychological thrillers. As I have mentioned, I had a few issues with the book. However, I still enjoyed it.
I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.
About the Book
- Title: While you were sleeping
- Author: Kathryn Croft
- Kindle Edition, 296 pages
- Expected publication: November 16th 2016 by Bookouture
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