When I Wake Up
- tarascates
- Apr 16, 2017
- 2 min read
A breathtaking, heart-pounding, dark debut, sure to delight fans of The Girl on the Train and Before I Go To Sleep.
'Why won't Mummy wake up?'
When Anna, a much-loved teacher and mother of two, is left savagely beaten and in a coma, a police investigation is launched. News of the attack sends shock waves through her family and their small Swedish community. Anna seems to have had no enemies, so who wanted her dead?
As loved-ones wait anxiously by her bedside, her husband Erik is determined to get to the bottom of the attack, and soon begins uncovering his wife's secret life, and a small town riven with desire, betrayal and jealousy.
As the list of suspects grows longer, it soon becomes clear that only one person can reveal the truth, and she's lying silent in a hospital bed...
I wanted to like this more because Jessica Jarlvi did a great job writing descriptively so you could get a very real sense for where the story took place, what was occurring, why and the characters involved. That was also the problem because it was hard trying to connect to her characters since it felt as if the vast majority were the sort of decrepit trash you wouldn’t shed a tear for if they got hit by a car.
She had the bones for an intriguing storyline but when you get into it the actual details of the plot became rather disturbing. Disturbing I could deal with, it’s no worse than our current reality. What I had trouble with were the numerous areas where it dragged feeling as if I was about to be forced into taping my eyes open so I didn’t accidentally fall asleep with some of these images creating nightmares in my subconscious.
There were definitely some interesting points to thrill you so I could easily see why this book will appeal to some but I wasn’t in that camp.
Thank you to Netgalley and Aria for allowing me to review this book.
*synopsis and pic from netgalley.com