It took me a while to get into this book, but then the twists kept me from putting it down. Told by different characters in different timelines it told the story and the motives until I wasn't sure who was actually responsible for the murders . I have a sleepwalker in the family so I know how they have no idea what they do, though nothing extreme. The ending I did not see coming until a comment made just before the last death. Worth reading in my opinion

Anna O is a psychological thriller that will keep you guessing right till the end. It is necessary to suspend your disbelief in places but if you are able to do this then you're in for a treat. Told through multiple POV's and with the added intrigue of Anna's own journal entry, this book will keep you captivated.

Thanks to Harper Collins UK and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this thought provoking book in exchange for an honest review.

Anna Ogilvy hasn‘t opened her eyes for four years, since she was found asleep holding a knife, having killed her 2 best friends. Ben Prince is tasked with waking her up so she can face a trial.

Supposed to be a thriller, I think, my overall impression of this book was that it was LONG. At one point I thought I was halfway through but was only at 10%. 😬

A few other annoyances with editing and writing style make it a so-so. There was a supposed diary, but it was written in first person present continuous (I am running etc) and who writes a diary like that? There were also case notes from doctors that were present tense and included reflective thoughts about themselves, not the patient. Both read like streams of consciousness thoughts, not what they were meant to be. The author needed different devices to move the plot on.

I was really looking forward to reading this one as there has been so much hype. Although the concept was good and the story being told from various viewpoints which enhanced the read for me but I did find it a little slow pace for me personally. I’m glad I read it though.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for ARC in return for an honest review.

This was a really interesting concept - totally different to anything I've read before. I enjoyed it generally but I'm afraid it didn't blow me away. But I know a lot of customers will be intrigued and love the premise of this one

3.5 rounded down cos it was all a bit messy...
In this book we meet Anna Ogilvy. I say meet, that's not strictly true. We learn about her. We can't meet her as she is asleep, and has been since she stabbed two people to death. There is no clear motive for what she did, and some also think that she was already asleep when she committed the crimes. We also meet (properly this time) Dr Benedict Prince who is a renown forensic psychologist, specialising in sleep related homicides. Are we really responsible for the things we do when we are asleep? Now Anna is showing signs of waking up and that means that she can finally be tried for her crimes. And maybe, we can find out the whys and wherefores...
Now... this book has all the hype thrown at it. And yes, the premise is a cracking idea. But sadly, for me anyway, the execution falls short of my expectation. It's overly complex and a bit messy in plotting. There are the usual clues and red herrings peppered throughout the book, with varying success. But I found it all a bit predictable and the twists too relied on in the sacrifice of other things I need from a book. Characterisation, plotting, pacing... It was also a bit repetitive and was a bit too fantastic at times... And the ending... well. I'd love to spell out all the things I want to about that but it will spoil it for others. Suffice to say I wasn't satisfied.
Now... what did fascinate me was the sleep stuff. The resignation syndrome, and the responsibility aspect. All new things to me in books, and that was why I was really excited about this book.
Now, maybe if I wasn't as excited. If there wasn't the hype. I might have enjoyed it more. Maybe. Possibly. More than likely.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I really did not like this book. Even though there has been some positive press around this one, I was not impressed at all. Will not be reading this author again in a hurry.
I would advise others to stay away.

Anna O pays lip service to the original Anna O - Freud's most famous patient. Calling this Anna O therefore is a little akin to that film London, which despite having Jason Statham in it, is not set in or about the city of London, but rather a character called London. Nevertheless, if its psychology you want, then this book will attempt to give you some in the form of lurid mixture of sleepwalking crime and extreme resignation syndrome. There are at least two relatively high bars for your suspension of disbelief to surmount before you get into the meat and potatoes of the plot which ends up pivoting on whether or not 60% of the book is from an unreliable narrator or not. It is breathless, it is ridiculous and yet I worked out the mystery about half way through and discounted it for all of those reasons.

Anna O is the daughter of a shadow cabinet minister, Emerald Fennel-esque writer who has a secret issue with sleepwalking and doing complex violence in her trances. She is also the most notorious prisoner in the UK, having seemingly murdered her two friends in her sleep, confessed to it (in her sleep), and then fallen asleep for four years. Since the murder took place in 2019, she hasn't missed much (not that the book ever mentions COVID), and because she hasn't woken up, she cannot be tried for the murder. So the Home Secretary tasks Ben, a sleep expert, to wake her up. Ben has already written about the case, and his wife was the first police officer to the crime scene. Can he wake her, did she do it, was she alone, is there some grand conspiracy going back twenty years featuring the most tenuous kind of revenge which - by the end of the book - clearly hasn't worked by a fiendish criminal mastermind? Oh yes.

Anna O is punchy beach reading but you have to run through it very quickly to not start getting annoyed by its own plot holes. Anna, after all, is not in a coma, she is asleep and therefore you would have thought that every possible reason why that might be the case would be investigated. The book's big twist relies on the gender neutrality of a a previous character who situationally and verbally always read to me as a specific gender. And the book runs out of significant suspects about halfway through, leaving one which makes the book complicit in lying to you, or the other one who is far-fetched but fits. In the end it was just too silly for me to take seriously.

Anna O
by Matthew Blake

I have learned not to get too excited anymore when I see new titles being compared to the likes of Gone Girl, but this premise was too good to ignore, so I took my chances, and WOW, did it pay off.

This is a stunning debut which deserves ALL the comps it has been getting. It is taut and clever, layered and compelling. The characters are insanely well drawn and the psychology is interesting and feels right.

Short chapters, mini cliffhangers, frequent reveals all combine to create a propulsive and tension packed plot with an explosive ending that I had considered, but then NO! I didn't see it coming.

Bravo Mr Blake, you got me.

Publication date: 1st February 2024
Thanks to #NetGalley and #HarperCollinsUK for the eGalley

Amazing opening, fascinating premise... and then unfortunately Anna O just didn't deliver. After the first couple of phenomenal chapters, the pace slowed significantly and it felt like it never really got going. The titular Anna O wasn't creepy enough, or present enough. Then when all the motivations were being revealed at the end, nothing quite added up right. I understand why the book is getting a lot of attention because the idea is great, but I'm disappointed it didn't live up to its potential.

This book has already received a lot of positive hype and that and the interesting premise made it an anticipated read for me.

Sadly though I just didn't really connect with this one. I found it difficult to engage with and found Ben in particular to be something of a flimsy character. Combined with the fact that I had guessed where this was going at quite an early stage, I struggled to maintain an interest.

I did like the way the story moved through different viewpoints but I felt it was quite slow especially in the middle and I felt there was quite a lot of unnecessary repetition.

I'm sure this layered, slow burn psychological thriller will hit the spot for many but it just didn't for me.

Thanks to Harper Collins & Netgalley for the chance to read an early copy

I like that the book is well researched and the subject matter of if someone is guilty while asleep is very interesting. I also liked the way the media were shown as influencing public opinion and the polarising opinions on social media. However, the book was overlong and rambling in places as well as stretching fiction too far over into the unbelievable. In my opinion, this book would be improved by cutting out the repetitive parts and making the book about 60% of its current size. This would greatly improve the flow and tension. This is a great book, hiding within too many words.

I had seen so much about this book, that I really wanted to read it.
It's told from multiple points of view and also has multi media aspects to it with diary entries.
I thought the plot was good and I enjoyed the psychology aspects of it. But I found that it fell a bit flat and was veryy slow paced for me.

Perfect daughter, Perfect role model and a successful star up business owner, 25 year old Anna O is found deep asleep after stabbing both her best friends

4 years later, not a blink
but now the case needs to end, she needs to wake up and there's only one person who can Dr. Benedict Prince, who's a forensic psychologist who specializes in sleep.
Will he be able to?

what i loved:
1. The plot itself, mysterious and full of twists, a new subject to me so i was very intrigue.. Al though i guessed some of the mysteries at around 30%, i was still left shell shocked at the end
2. Multiple characters and timeline which kept us deeper in the story and i would say caused even more mystery

what i didn't like:
1. There were some scenes that were too dragging, scenes that could have easily been skipped example we didn't need a whole journal entry on an old article on sleepwalking when it could have been explained in a paragraph
2. I hated how Dr. Prince's character was portrayed
in the beginning we are made to assume he's a successful psychologist with thousands of research and author of books, he's to be confident in his work but throughout the book, he's a weakling, confused, distracted, slow to react, too many theories in the mind and mostly played victim and never the psychologist

I rate this one 3.5 stars and I'd like to thank Net galley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange of my honest review
I'd recommend this to anyone who loves mystery and psychology genres.

Automatically i knew i would enjoy this book as i love multi POV books. This is a slow paced book but it works with the thriller aspect.

Can you be guilty of a crime committed in your sleep? And how could you prove it? A convenient excuse or a serious medical condition? That and many other questions are asked and sometimes answered in this book. It's a good read, and there's no doubt it will be appearing on Netflix soon (other subscription services are available). But it suffers from a very laggy mid section, which unfortunately stops it from being great. Nonetheless, it is still an enjoyable but occasionally slow read

This book grips you in a kind of dreamlike state, where you’re not quite sure what’s real. There is a real buzz about this book and you can see why. It has a hugely intriguing premise – can you be guilty for crimes you committed while you were sleeping – which resolves in a plot that is jam packed with twists.

3.5 I want to start by saying that this one feels like a sure-fire bestseller. The premise is intriguing, it’s got fantastic set ups, a handsome Prince, a questionable Princess and you can already imagine it on Netflix. Definitely coming to a sunbed near you this summer.

Okay, so that’s all the good stuff.

For me there are some issues. The ending is frustratingly schlepped (dragged) out. I know that the author is trying to ratchet up tension but when we’re told the same thing over and over, it tends to behave like a soufflé that’s been out of the oven for too long.

There are some strange references that pop up for no real reason - such as Harry Potter mentions - that jar.

Sleep is such a fascinating subject and I was really interested in reading about it because I don’t know all that much about the science behind it. Unfortunately, I never really believed that Ben Prince did either.

Biggest issue of all was that I guessed a lot - though not all - of the ending. I certainly got the salient answer fairly quickly so then picked up all the clues as I read through the book.

With thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Anna O should have been my perfect read. Not only am I a thriller addict but I work in sleep too. I felt like the book started well and I was really engaged in the plot. However, around half way through, the book really started to drag and I felt the pace really dropped. The change in narrator was jarring - I found I would get interested again only for the narrative to change and I would once again disengage with the plot. I found all the characters quite unlikeable and I was irritated by the frequent quotes from other literature. Yes, it does have a clever twist at the end of the book but it felt like such a slog to get to the end, that the twist didn’t have the impact it should have. For these reasons, I am sorry, I don’t think I can recommend this book.

Thank you to the author, published and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a wild read!

After a super strong beginning, a bevy of characters were introduced and the pace dropped off a cliff. I’ll admit I had to wade through a decent chunk of this book from around the 20% mark but the examination of sleep kept me interested although I’d have question marks of some of the information presented within.

The pace improved in the second half of the book, some decent twists and turns but I didn’t love the conclusion. I think this one will split opinions , get people talking and will be a bestseller!

A little too convoluted and unevenly paced but an original read!

3 star