Review: Before I Go To Sleep

Before I Go to Sleep
by S.J. Watson
Published by Harper
Publication Date June 14, 2011
Source: Library
Genres: Thriller
Goodreads

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 only be telling you half the story.

Welcome to Christine's life.

Before I Go To Sleep is to be likened to the film, Memento, only without Guy Pierce and on crack.  Remember, crack is wack.

Christine Lucas, gained amnesia after a hit and run accident and can only hold one days memories at a time, when the clock strikes midnight, her brain hits rewind to play out the next day as it had been the first.

Each morning, her husband Ben must remind her that he is her husband guiding her through the day.  But as we learn on the first page: DO NOT TRUST BEN!  Is this truth or Christine’s paranoia?   We learn of Christine’s life through her daily journal entries, an activity prescribed by her therapist whom Ben is not aware of.    What the Hell is going on here?

Before I Go To Sleep twists a reader’s mind like a pretzel, never quite believing what is written, it’s all a bit off.  Because of this, I find it difficult to write a review to give this book justice without giving anything away.  Like our main character, I hardly trusted anyone, and reading her daily journal, slowly putting all the pieces together, it was still unclear.  Certainly, because those four words haunt the back of my mind “DO NOT TRUST BEN!”

Learning of Christine’s previous life does help build her character but does not add a clear-cut mold as to the characters themselves.  Looking back at what I’ve written, it appears just as long-winded repetitive as Christine’s journal entries itself.  Like Christine Lucas’ memory, which restarts every night, I could have read Before I Go To Sleep both forwards and backwards and would still turn me around.  Fantastic.