While You Sleep: A Novel

by Stephanie Merritt

Hardcover, 2019

Status

Available

Publication

Pegasus Books (2019), 400 pages

Description

Fiction. Romance. Suspense. Thriller. HTML: It begins, they say, with a woman screaming ... On a remote Scottish island, the McBride house stands guard over its secrets. A century ago, a young widow and her son died mysteriously there. Just last year a local boy, visiting for a dare, disappeared without a trace. For Zoe Adams, newly arrived from America, the house offers a refuge from her failing marriage. But her peaceful retreat is disrupted by strange and disturbing events: night-time intrusions, unknown voices, and a constant sense of being watched. The locals want her to believe that these incidents are echoes of the McBrides' dark past. Zoe is convinced the danger is closer at hand and all too real-but can she uncover the truth before she is silenced?.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member jmchshannon
No one who reads this site has any doubt that fantasy is my jam. Witches. Vampires. Demons. Ghosts. Fae. Dragons. I love it all. I also love a good thriller. So, While You Sleep should be a book I adored. After all, the entire premise is a haunted house and a mysterious death on a remote Scottish
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island. It all but screamed my name.

Unfortunately, as so many things in life, While You Sleep is missing that “it” factor that allows a mediocre book to become unforgettable. Rather, it is one of those books I finished and promptly forgot until I reread the synopsis in preparation for writing this review. It is not any one thing that dooms the book either. Instead, it dies by a thousand papercuts – or the literary equivalent.

For one thing, Ms. Merritt relies too heavily on the possibility of an unreliable narrator in Zoe. As we learn all the reasons why Zoe left the U.S., we must question her version of events, or so Ms. Merritt would have us believe. The thing is, I never bought into Zoe’s unreliability, and so everything that occurs in the house never becomes anything but a ghostly mystery.

Without the possibility of an unreliable narrator, enough crazy events happen to Zoe in her vacation house that should make While You Sleep a crazy ghost story, and it is. However, something happens along the way that is even a bit more than I was willing to accept. Ms. Merritt attempts to stay on that fine line of possibility versus probability by never actually introducing a ghost, something that drives me crazy in novels. It is a bit like having your cake and eating it too. If you are going to create a ghost story, then stand by that decision and stick with it. Do not create a ghost story and then never explain the ghost or try to pretend that it might all be in the narrator’s mind but probably not. She provides very heavy hints as to what is happening to Zoe, but she never actually comes out and says it. Plus, even at the end, long after anyone is willing to believe in Zoe’s unreliability, she still tries to convince readers that the entire story could still be a from Zoe’s unstable mind. Just…no.

I wanted to like While You Sleep. I wanted it to scare me in that delicious way a good ghost story can. Instead, I read a mildly entertaining story that tries too hard to put doubt into the reader’s mind and loses its way. I finished it to get answers, even as those answers left me disgruntled and disappointed. There is promise within the pages though that would make me willing to try another one of Ms. Merritt’s novels, although I would approach it cautiously just in case.
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LibraryThing member JJbooklvr
Gothic horror, great twists, and some steamy sex. What’s not to love!
LibraryThing member Darcia
I so wanted to love this book. I was in the mood for a Gothic atmospheric thriller. Unfortunately, for me, the story was a letdown.

On a bright note, the writing itself is good. I had no issues with the writing at all; it's just that the story execution didn't work for me on many levels.

We begin
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with the perfect setup: a small Scottish island and a secluded home on a cliff. Yet none of this atmosphere came alive. The house could have been any large house, anywhere. Zoe explored very little of the home, and mostly only when she was forced into it. She took no interest in this place she'd come to for refuge. The island was much the same. She went where she had to go, and she did and saw little else. So the visual I got was a generic home on a generic cliff.

The characters are largely stereotypes. The island is very much the small town, small minds cliche. I didn't like Zoe at all. She's a woman in her forties who behaves like a teenager. She wants people to respect her independence, while she is constantly turning to the men on the island for help at every turn, and then resenting them for their so-called interference.

Much of the book reads like a B-rated horror movie, where everyone is yelling, "Don't go in there!" And yet the character goes in there, again and again.

The "chillingly erotic" aspect is 50 Shades-style erotica, which means a bit of brute force, S&M, lust, and sex for the sake of sex scenes. This part of the story took center stage, but to me Zoe's behavior and her reactions afterward just seemed silly. I didn't find anything erotic in this content at all.

There's a lot going on, with the backstory of the McBride's and the house's dark past, a missing child, Zoe's secrets, a teacher with a mysterious background, a shopkeeper with a mysterious background, the weird stuff going on with Zoe in the house, etc. Too many plot directions resulted in no clear focus. Rather than building eerie suspense that put me on edge, I was just bored.

I figured out Zoe's secret early on, and so that twist only amounted to confirmation. Another twist confirmed the slimy feeling I had with certain characters. In the end, it all felt predictable.

Ultimately, I finished the book because I wanted to know if I was right about the story's direction, and because I was hoping for some sort of redemption. I was right about the direction, and I didn't get the redemption I sought.

*I received an advance copy from the publisher, via Amazon Vine.*
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LibraryThing member MrsRJ
I was anxious t0 read While You Sleep. The creative and inviting cover art had just enough spookiness to grab my attention. The author laid the foundation with the mysterious deaths a century ago. Then upped-the-ante by adding the recent disappearance of a boy acting on a dare. This could have been
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one-heck-of-a good read. The writing is solid and stylish. But I found it impossible to connect with Merritt's lead character, Zoe. She was self-centered and utterly self-absorbed. It was frustrating and served as a significant distraction from the central narrative.

Then I got to the "Fifty Shades" of what the hell is that doing here? That level of erotica was unnecessary. IMO it felt like a desperate attempt to shock and re-engage the reader, thus luring us to the ending. Unfortunately, I couldn't connect, didn't like, and was often (very often) frustrated with the main character. . .and "Grey" just isn't my cup of tea.

Happy Reading,

RJ
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LibraryThing member Carol420
It had all the elements you would expect from a psychological thriller with a strong supernatural overtone…the remote island…the bad weather…people cut off from the authorities…ghost stories…weird folklore…and sinister characters you are not sure can be trusted. Throw in a less than
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perfect main character who is escaping from something in their life… and some locals who don't care at all for strangers and you have the makings of great ghost story. This didn’t disappoint in the least.
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LibraryThing member camharlow2
An atmospheric story, see on a small island off the coast of Scotland, Stephanie Merritt has written a book that captures the hauntings and horrors of the traditional Gothic novel. Onto this island, comes Zoe, trying to escape from her past in America and her fragile relationship with her husband.
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She has rented a house in a remote location, which locally has the reputation for unexplained events dating back to the Victorian era and the disappearance of a boy a year earlier. Zoe’s fragile mental state is not helped by stories of these events and a growing fear that she is repeating the life of Ailsa McBride all that time ago. Merritt keeps the reader guessing and glued as to whether Zoe’s experiences are real or conjured by her imagination, as the story careers and lurches to a chilling ending.
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LibraryThing member DebTat2
I had high hopes for this book!
Unfortunately I found it quite hard to get into the story and was tempted to leave it and put it to one side for another day, but fortunately I did stick with it right up to the bitter end.

It must be so hard coming up with new different ideas these days as there so
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many out there already or taking a well covered topic and try to put your own spin on it as it's all been done before in some way or other.

But Stephanie Merritt has managed to do just that!

A haunted house on a remote island in Scotland, the local legend of a woman who killed her son and then herself is still well-known to the locals and is refueled when a young child goes missing right by that house.

Some of the twists were pretty obvious, don't worry im not giving any spoilers away! which I was a bit disheartened by I must admit.
But there are some great red herrings thrown in along the way and an ending that I didn't predict at all.

So all in all, whilst it took a while to get into the book the second half really does make up for it and some of the stuff in the first half starts to make more sense. If you like ghost stories or folklore and a touch of the supernatural, then this is the book for you!

While You Sleep was published in the UK on 8 Mar. 2018 and is on sale now. Amazon has called this book "The most exciting new thriller you will read in Summer 2018"

So grab yourself a copy and see what you think! You won't regret it :-)
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Language

Original language

English

Physical description

400 p.; 6.4 inches

ISBN

1643130056 / 9781643130057

Local notes

fiction
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