Reading the Alphabet...

The W shelf has been good to read. I was wandering the library stacks the other day and ran across a book written by an author I've never read before; I picked it up on a whim and quickly got caught up in a very well-written thriller. Talk about bookish serendipity!

Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson tells the story of Christine Lucas, a woman in her forties who has a rare form of amnesia--whatever pieces of her life that she manages to remember while she's awake, she forgets all over again when she goes to sleep. Her husband, Ben, has to tell her who she is each morning. But he doesn't know about the journal she's been keeping; only Dr. Nash, the psychologist she's been working with in secret, knows that. It is a journal with a warning on the first page: Don't Trust Ben. It's a journal that holds the truth.

"My own truth, one I have not been told but have remembered. And it is written now, etched in this journal rather than my memory, but permanent nevertheless. I know that the book I am writing may be dangerous, as well as necessary. It is not fiction. It may reveal things best left undiscovered. Secrets that ought not to see the light of day."

But they are secrets that Christine is determined to figure out, no matter the cost.

This is a hard book to put down. Not knowing whether or not to trust Christine's memory as she begins to uncover her husband's lies one by one makes this novel even more chilling. Which version of her life is the truth? And the mystery surrounding her loss of memory deepens with each journal page that she reads. This novel, with its unexpected twists, especially at the end, is quiet suspense at its best. I'm so glad I spent another week reading from the W shelf.

Happy Reading!