Member Reviews
I enjoyed this overall but found I had to suspend belief sometimes!
This book is a great read. The first chapter follows Alex Taylor, a Doctor goes through a most traumatic experience with no-one believing her afterward. This story is not only frightening in that it could happen but was descriptive and gripping. Her reputation is on the line, her friends and family don't support her, her life hangs in the balance. The book definetly entertained me and kept intrigued. I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good psychotic thriller.
I really enjoyed this thriller I was hooked from the start and I looking forward to more books by this author.
“Alex Taylor wakes up tied to an operating table. The man who stands over her isn't a doctor.
The choice he forces her to make is utterly unspeakable.
But when Alex re-awakens, she's unharmed - and no one believes her horrifying story. Ostracised by her colleagues, her family and her partner, she begins to wonder if she really is losing her mind.”
Soon there are other victims. Yet everyone still refuses to believe her story, or the probability that these other victims are related to her attack.
This is a gripping psychological thriller which definitely had me hooked right from the start.
Thanks to NetGalley and Bonnier Zaffre for giving me the opportunity to read this book.
Love the blurb on this book and it sounded like my kind of story. Straight away your launched into the terror that main character Laura is experiencing. Its not pleasant....but is it real??? No one believes her story. Not the police, friends or boyfriend. So did it really happen? I really enjoyed the book and was terrified by some of the ecperiences described in the story. Without giving too much away its well written, fast paced and a clever plot which keeps you guessing throughout.
Absolutely brilliant. Kept me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. Kept me guessing who was the killer until the killer was revealed. Thoroughly recommended.
Suspense fans, this one’s for you!
The mystery begins on page one and doesn’t let up until the very last chapter. I was so hooked.
Before I get into it, read this description and see what I mean:
Alex Taylor wakes up tied to an operating table. The man who stands over her isn't a doctor.
The choice he forces her to make is utterly unspeakable.
But when Alex re-awakens, she's unharmed - and no one believes her horrifying story. Ostracised by her colleagues, her family and her partner, she begins to wonder if she really is losing her mind.
And then she meets the next victim.
Ok - so as you can tell one of the central mysteries is what happened, if anything happened at all! And I couldn’t even tell THAT until the end. Every time I thought I had it under control, something would make me question myself.
I really liked Alex, even if she was hard to get a grip on, and I was very much invested in her story from the beginning. It’s a nightmare everyone has, and she very possibly lived through it.
The author is very skilled at creating rich characters and a very complex plot without giving much away. There’s a lot of moving parts and they are very nicely tied together at the end.
I really enjoyed the ending. It was a fitting conclusion to a great novel. I don’t want to say too much because this book is so good, you’ll want to enjoy it yourself.
Just go get it. Seriously.
A good suspenseful thriller! A little slow to begin with, but picks up pace throughout. Full review to come!
I received this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion from Netgalley. I wanted to like this book so much. It is write down my alley of psychological thriller, but I hated the main character and the writing style. The way the author jumped around with Alex being truly depressed to taking vacations was not believable. The story line was way to drawn out and I couldn't finish it.
Don't Wake up
4 stars
A Murder mystery that will have you doubting
The author cleverly sucks you in to the final chapter, as you discover if Dr Alex is sane and a victim or crazy and a killer,
Alex Taylor wakes up tied to an operating table. The man who stands over her isn't a doctor. The choice he forces her to make is utterly unspeakable. But when Alex re-awakens, she's unharmed - and no one believes her horrifying story.
Ostracised by her colleagues, her family and her partner, she begins to wonder if she really is losing her mind. And then she meets the next victim.
This carefully crafted story will keep you engaged to the end.
www.books-reviewed.weebly.com
I received a free ARC from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. "Don't Wake Up" was a different twist on the typical thriller/ mystery novel. Dr. Alex Taylor leaves work at the emergency room of the local hospital expecting to meet her veterinarian boyfriend in the parking lot. The next thing she knows, she waking up in an operating room with a psychopath. The police can find no evidence of trauma or foul play and everyone beings to brush off her claims. More women begin to die and they are all left with a tie to Alex, leading police to think she is the killer. Overall, it was an interesting read, but parts of the book were drawn out. The book could have been trimmed down a bit to make it a more engaging read.
I have tried to pick this up a couple of times, finding the premise intriguing, but a quarter into the book I am finding the premise totally far fetched. I work in a hospital and some of the things described are just plain unbelievable. Sorry, but I won't be finishing it, conceding that I am not the right audience for this book.
I started reading this book last year but stopped reading as I just wasn't enjoying it but new year and I decide to pick up where I left off and see if it was any better. Wow, what a fantastic read it turned out to be - very much a slow burner of a book that reels you in the more you read. By the end, I literally couldn't put the book down until I finished it to find out how it finished . I won't spoil it but lets just say you need to persevere and keep at it because you'll eventually come to love it as much as I did!
Loved this book, would definitely purchase more in the future! I'll be on the lookout for what's next
This is a thriller and a half, the ending was quite stressful and had me on the edge of my seat.
I am very keen to read more from this author, loved it.
A definite 5 stars.
A fast paced psychological thriller which keeps you guessing throughout . When Dr Alec wakes up srraplled to an operating table it is the start of a bid to ruin her but no one believes her versiOn of events . Form one guess to another I never guessed correctly . Well done Liz
Ok, wow. I have to say, the first few pages of this took me by surprise. I guess I wasn't totally prepared, even after reading the synopsis, for what was going to happen to Alex. This made me really unhappy, which is wonderful for the author, horrible for me!
I love psychological thrillers, but this one hit me in some wrong places. Talk about triggered! There are some awful themes in this that are difficult to read about.
That said, I sped read through most of this. That beginning portion just would not get out of my mind, but not in a way that made me not want to put the book down, but in a way that made me not want to pick the book back up! I am still doing a review because I honestly believe that the author did a brilliant job of writing this psychological thriller, and although I couldn't stomach it, I'm SURE there are many readers that will want to read this.
The plot of the story is good, and even made me curious how Alex was going to clear her name. I was extremely unhappy with one of the cops, who refused to believe anything Alex said and even went so far as to go behind her supervisor's back just to implicate Alex. I was already devastated from the beginning and now we have this moron who won't even do her job!? I kept screaming at the book, ugh she was so irritating! Laura... eww, not my favorite character.
Like I said, I kind of sped read through this due to the graphicness of the plot. I can normally handle most things, I do love my psychological thrillers and horror, and geez I just read about a starving pregnant lady having to eat maggots, like I have a strong stomach, but I still could not handle this one. There are so many reasons why, and none of them have to do with the writing. Yes, this is a it's me, not you, letter to the author. I just want those that enjoy psychological thrillers to know they'll have a crazy ride on their hands and to prepare themselves. It gets gruesome. Hell, it starts gruesome!
In short: I definitely recommend this to those that enjoy psychological thrillers. Brace yourself for a bumpy ride!
I should put my cards on the table and state immediately that I didn’t enjoy this book. From reading the reviews I am obviously in a minority but those who gave poor reviews did so for exactly the same reasons that I shall be using. However, it’s just as well that individual readers look for different qualities while reading or it would be a very boring world.
There is an unwritten contract between the author of a novel and the reader. The author has given birth to a product which offers entertainment and sometimes information and the reader agrees to invest time and sometimes money and to suspend belief. To what degree that belief is suspended is the crux of what we find in this literary example. Those who will accept pretty much anything the author decides to present will love this thriller. For those (like me) who enjoy a more logical approach, the read will become increasingly ridiculous.
Alex Taylor is a senior doctor working in the A&E department of a busy hospital. She enjoys a serious relationship with vet Patrick Ford and is well liked at work and thought of as a highly competent member of the team. When she wakes up strapped to an operating table, naked and with very little to cover her modesty, she doesn’t recognise the person who is threatening to mutilate her. She is found later, fully dressed, in the hospital car park and the nightmare starts as no-one believes her.
I can not be more specific about my serious concerns without giving spoilers but I will generalise. Alex’s life spirals into what appears to be a terminal decline. She abuses alcohol and prescription drugs. Many of her subsequent actions can be attributed to her confusion and the changes in her life but others are just nonsensical. The actions of others, including the police, are also most unprofessional and in fact laughable on occasions. I regaled my wife while reading with snippets of ludicrous events.
To be blunt, there are too many unexplained sequences and too many ignored clues as to what really happened to Alex for this book to be taken too seriously. I vacillated about giving the novel 2 or 3 stars but, in the end, gave the author the benefit of having created some solid, if flawed, characters. The writing style had merit and the dialogue was relevant so it’s not all bad news. I would suggest that if the storyline has any appeal that you read it and make up your own mind.
mr zorg
Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review
I feel I have been very spoiled recently with such fantastic debut novels. Don’t wake up, is a chilling psychological thriller that left me speechless. This dark, gripping and frightening story kept me wanting to read more, it also made me want to sleep with the light on.
Can’t wait for the next novel.
This goes on my DNF list - sadly because the premise and blurb were so promising.
While the story starts off with an attention grabber it quickly falters and left me bored. Its drawn out and convoluted. The characters aren't very compelling and it was way too easy to skip chunks of the story.