FORECAST FRIDAY: STAY AWAKE by Megan Goldin (Penguin)
Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi, confused and disoriented. When she arrives at her brownstone home in Brooklyn she finds strangers living in the house she shares with her friend Amy. No one knows Amy and no one knows Liv. When she is cast back onto the street she finds that her only possessions are a wad of cash and a bloodstained knife. Desperately Liv tries to work out what is happening, but her only guides are the scrawled messages and numbers on her hands and arms, and the repeated phrase: STAY AWAKE!
Australian author Megan Goldin has been steadily building up her reputation as an outstanding crafter of intriguing crime novels from her promising debut, The Girl in Kellers Way through to her impressive 2020 novel The Night Swim. Now with Stay Awake she seems poised to make a further spectacular leap up the bestseller lists.
Apparently written during the drawn-out COVID lockdowns in Melbourne, Stay Awake draws on the sense of disorientation and disconnection that Megan, and many others, felt during that period. Memory and a sense of claustrophobia in a large city, play an important part in this gripping thriller, which brings to mind Christopher Nolan’s cult classic Memento. Megan has already demonstrated a good ability to write original, highly readable novels with her 2018 book The Escape Room, but I think she is going to excel herself with Stay Awake.
Even though it is not due out until mid-August, I have already started reading Stay Awake and can attest that Megan’s intriguing opening quickly drags you into the story and keeps you keenly reading. I think it is going to be a gripping read! I will do a full review closer to the release date, but in the meantime lock it in as a book to look out for.
Stay Awake will be released in Australia on 16 August 2022 and in the United Kingdom on 18 August 2022.
Here is a link to my review of Megan’s outstanding cold case podcast crime novel The Night Swim: DEADLY PODCASTS: THE SUICIDE HOUSE by Charlie Donlea/THE NIGHT SWIM by Megan Goldin | Murder Mayhem and Long Dogs