From my blog:

"As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I’m still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me. . ."
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.

And so begins Before I Go To Sleep, the debut novel of the oh-so-talented S.J. Watson. Our protagonist is Christine Lucas, a 47 year old woman who suffered a terrible accident twenty years ago that caused an anomaly with her memory - every morning she wakes up not knowing who she is. Some days she wakes thinking she is a little girl; other days she believes she is back in college, before her accident. She never remembers that the man laying beside her in bed is her husband, Ben. Each morning he must remind her who she is, where she is, how old she is, and what happened to her. Post-it notes and pictures cover her bathroom mirror as a reminder of her life.

As the novel opens, Christine receives a phone call from someone named Dr. Nash who tells her that they have been secretly meeting him for quite some time in order to try and regain her memory. She agrees to meet with him. During the course of their meeting, Dr. Nash returns a journal to her, explaining that she has been recording her daily activities and that she may be able to find some of the answers she is looking for in the pages of her writings.

Intrigued, Christine rushes home and begins reading. This is what comprises most of the story - Christine reading back through her life over the past weeks. Some haunting and startling realizations begin to make their way to the surface. Christine is being lied to. Someone she trusts is not telling her the full story. But how will she ever find out the answers when each day begins like the previous one never happened? And who can she trust?

This book is riveting and taut with such undercurrents of psychological tension that you will not be able to put it down until all of the answers are revealed in the shocking conclusion. I absolutely loved this book and it is my favorite of 2011 so far. In the words of Tess Gerritsen, this is “Quite simply the best debut novel I have ever read.” Truly. I couldn't say it any better. Just read the book and see for yourself.

My Rating: