Set in a small town in Sweden, When I Wake Up centers on Anna, a young, committed teacher and mother of five-year-old twins. Anna is in a coma after a brutal beating in the parking lot of her school. Why would anybody want to harm a young woman who was 'teacher of the year'?
As it turns out, there are actually quite a few suspects with a motive. The story switches timeframes from the present to the months leading up to the attack on Anna. There are numerous points of view as well, but the story was always easy to follow.
It wasn't at all what I had expected. Warning: The story contains some explicit sexual scenes.
It was incredibly intriguing trying to work out who was behind the attack on Anna. I found this very difficult to put down and was thinking about it when I couldn't read it. The book is full of obnoxious characters. But it worked. I didn't need any likable characters in this. They were complex people and well drawn. Daniel, a seventeen-year-old pupil of Anna's, was particularly well characterized. It was really compulsive reading until the attacker was revealed. At that point, the story fell apart for me, or perhaps better, I felt cheated. Difficult to explain why without giving the entire plot away. But I didn't like the way the author manipulated one of the perspectives in order to get to the admittedly completely startling twist. Apart from that, this was a really good, gripping debut and I would certainly read more by Jessica Jarlvi.
I received an ARC via NetGalley.

When I Wake up by Jessica Jarlvi.
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...

An absolutely fantastic read with brilliant characters. But I did not trust Erik. I loved Anna. I did not see that coming. Shocked. 5*. Netgalley and aria.

Disturbing passions

Anna is a popular teacher, voted 'Teacher of the Year', and it is a great shock to everyone when she is found viciously beaten and left for dead in the school car park. She is rushed to hospital where she remains in a coma with no guarantee she will ever wake up.

For Anna's husband Erik and their five-year-old twins Sebastian and Lukas this attack is life-changing, and all they can do is wait to see if she recovers. With help from his mother he keeps up the boys' routine as far as he is able, making sure they are supported both at home and at their day care where the familiar face of Pernilla, their carer is comforting.

There seems to be no motive for the attack, that is, until details of Anna's life begin to emerge. Her marriage is not as happy as it seems, with Erik resenting the time she spends at school, and her commitment to her pupils. His job is unrewarding and he dreams of a career in music with his friend Rob. Then there is Daniel, a new seventeen-year-old pupil who is fixated on Anna and her seemingly ideal family life, so different from his own home where his mother is frequently drunk and entertains a succession of men. Struggling to find some time for herself Anna drives to the next town and stumbles upon a small library where she meets Iris.

This story weaves its way between the relationships Anna has with Erik, Daniel and Iris and the impact each has on her life. The characters are diverse, each with their own agenda, which emerge as each tells its own story. As in life generally little is as it seems. The lesser characters, Daniel's mother Frida and Iris's husband Rolf add colour and depth.

The mystery of the identity and motive of Anna's attacker is multi-faceted, with the author presenting sub-plots to muddy the waters, and misdirection in spades.

I really enjoyed this book and whilst there were many clues to the attacker his or her identity evaded me until the end. If I have any criticism it would be that there was possibly too much going on; so many stresses and strains on Anna and Erik's relationship at the same time seemed to be unlikely, but then again, truth can be stranger than fiction!

A satisfying read.

Pashtpaws

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

When I saw the blurb for When I Wake Up, I was intrigued. I’ve been dipping my toes more into the Scandicrime genre but this is different to the police procedural style novels from Staalsen and Dahl I’ve read.


The time jumps in the story works really well. it provides the intrigue, building as we learn what has happened in the weeks running up to Anna’s attack. The way the story drops in more and more information, the more I felt I didn’t know who it was. With each chapter set in the past, each individual around Anna gets motive and I could not decide who was the culprit!


In places the story didn’t feel like it was a crime thriller. It is saucy in places – Iris and Rolf are very sexual people and this sensuality transfers itself to their bedroom partners. I wasn’t overly convinced at the ease people fell for Iris; it didn’t feel real to me.


I didn’t love this book but there was nothing in particular wrong with the story; I just didn’t click with it. I felt it was a book of 3 parts, the start and the end were good and but the middle was only OK. I get that the middle was needed for the ending but it didn’t feel that tense or suspenseful in comparison to other crime thrillers.


Many thanks to Aria Fiction and Netgalley for giving me a copy of When I Wake Up.

Thank you to net gallery and the publisher for an advanced copy in return for an honest review...

This book literally has me at stalemate. I am unsure of how I feel about it. I liked parts but it has very disturbing moments. As a book I found it hard to keep up with. I could possibly see it playing out better as a movie. I felt like I was constantly jumping between story lines of people and not at all on the same page throughout the book.

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Sue1958's review May 21, 2017 · edit
it was amazing
bookshelves: 2017-ng-readers-challenge-group, blog-tours, direct-from-pa, family-drama-marriage-relationships, love-and-romance, net-galley, psychological-thrillers, publishers-who-sent-paperbacks, suspense-mystery-crime, unputdownable

This is a book that I would encourage everyone who knows me about my love for books, should read. It's had me glued. When I had to put it down I couldn't stop thinking about what I was reading.

Anna is a teacher, she's a committed teacher who goes that extra mile for her pupils.
There is one pupil who has "issues" that Anna gets involved in. But this pupil has other ideas.
He wants more than Anna can give, but, does she know that?

The other couple in this story has an unconventional lifestyle. Sooner or later they get tangled up and interwoven in each other.

I found this a compulsive read, an eerie read. I also didn't have a hunge who was the culprit although some seemed a little too obvious. The author took me on a guessing game, a thrill of a ride that I thoroughly enjoyed and was reluctant to get off.

I can't wait for more.

My thanks to Aria for the chance to read this.
And via Net Galley.

A great debut thriller. The book is well written and is a quick and easy read.

Anna is a young mother of two little twin boys living with her husband who is a house painter by day and want to be rock star by night while Anna is the main support for the family with her job as a teacher. One thing about Anna is that she cares deeply for her students and her job which can be a subject of conflict in her marriage.

One night after returning to the school Anna is attacked in the parking lot and savagely beaten and left for dead. Fortunately though Anna is found in time and rushed to the hospital where her family and friends wait at her side for her to awaken from the coma while the police are investigating just who could have attacked her.

The story in When I Wake Up is told by alternating the point of view between multiple characters and alternating the time line between what is happening in the current and back months before Anna was attacked. Even with the changing timelines and POV I still found the story easy to follow and the mystery of who attacked Anna very engaging.

However, this story was another I struggled on deciding on my rating due to some content within the book. I don’t want to be too specific as to spoil the story but in my opinion with this one the author went a little too far with connecting everyone together, I kept thinking of the six degrees of separation theory and thinking who this is becoming one degree if possible. There’s shadow and doubt cast on all the characters but it could have been done without so much overlapping in the who knows who department, especially a couple of them being from another town nearby but still intertwined in the lives of everyone else.

In the end I’m rating this one down the middle-ish at 3.5 stars. The story was engaging to find out what happened to Anna but just a tad unbelievable when it came to the overall character building.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

This was a different story, woman is attacked and is left in a coma. The story evolves around what her husband and family find out while she is in then coma. The story itself was ok, but it bounced around from character to other characters and it made the reader a bit confused.

Great read! Looking forward to reading more by this author! Highly recommend!

This novel is a gentle whodunnit which manages to explore each character in detail and allows the reader to make their own judgement on them. The few sex scenes are very tastefully done and none of it gratuitous. I really enjoyed the pace of the novel which kept me company for a few evenings. Not sure if you could describe the ending as a twist but it certainly wasn't predictable.

** spoiler alert ** I don't know how to review this book without spoilers so I have check the box to hide this review. The book is about the lives of Anna and Erik, who are married and have twin boys. Neither person is happy in their marriage. They both end up sleeping with other people but it's Anna's affair that sets this whole book in motion. At the very beginning Anna is beaten really bad and ends up in a coma. You go back and forth between 6 months previous and the present. You end up with 3 likely suspects but who the person actual is in the end still doesn't make sense to me. Sometimes when I see it I can picture him being that mean but most times it just doesn't fit with the story. He isn't violent in his past or through most of the book so how he could all of sudden have such violent rage I don't get. I mean it does happen, it just would make more sense if it was one of the other 2 suspects. Maybe that is why the book is so good because it's not who you suspect.

An interesting mystery with a lot of very unlikable characters. Anna, a teacher, is in a coma after being attacked. We get different points of view of the aftermath, as well as the events leading up to it. There is no shortage of suspects. Daniel, her student, was stalking her. He lives with an alcoholic, neglectful mother. Erik, Anna's husband, is trying to hold it together. He is an immature mama's boy who thinks it's OK to leave his little kids and go on a boys' night out when his wife lies unconscious in the hospital. Even secondary characters are obnoxious and violent. Now, this normally is to a problem for me, but it was hard to root for them. Only Anna was redeemable. Her secret, understandable, even if she makes some very questionable decisions (sure, let's not report that you're being stalked and borderline sexually assaulted). There is only another character I liked, Iris, a librarian, also surrounded by horrible people. But my biggest problem with this novel was that it lied. I can't be more specific without giving something big away, but one of the characters is not like he or she seems, and the flashbacks pretty much cheat the reader. It is an interesting story, it's just hard to get invested in a story when you're just getting continuously aggravated.

Thanks to netgalley and the publishers I was able to read a copy of this book ahead of publication in exchange for an honest review.

This is a fast paced thriller which I really enjoyed. I kept thinking I knew "who done it" but it could have been any of the many characters as they all had a motive.

While Anna is in a coma she is the only one who knows her attacker. The reader is told all about the betrayal on both sides of her marriage and how life is not as it seems. A quick easy read.

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.

I love Scandinavian thrillers and dramas and this looked great. Anna is in the middle of the many drama's in this small Swedish town. She has been assaulted and almost every character is a suspect. Lots of unsavoury characters for sure. I found the book dragged a little however really wanted to find out who had done this and why. Some fairly erotic scenes included. Overall a good story with a satisfactory ending.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The book's description was very intriguing and held a lot of promise for a great storyline. I found the characters to all be very unlikeable and the storyline to be rather disturbing. This book didn't appeal to me as a reader, but I think there will be other readers who find this story to be appealing.