Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson Book Review

      I guess when I first started reading Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson, my thoughts turned to the movie 50 First Dates with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler.  In the movie, Drew Barrymore plays Lucy Whitmore, a woman who doesn’t have any memories of what happened since her accident several years ago.  She lives each day with no memory of what happened the previous day.

       So, seven years later, SJ Watson adopts the same premise in his book.   Again, we have a character named Christine who has no memories of what happened to her since her accident and she lives day by day with no memory of what happened the previous day.  The difference here is that Before I Go To Sleep is a psychological thriller, not a romantic comedy. 

        It really doesn’t matter to me that the same plot device is used.  It makes for a great book as Christine doesn’t remember what happened to her and the reader has to figure out what happened.  Yes, there are some clues but I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by this plot, especially when I wonder if Christine can trust any of the other characters.  The book moves along nicely, and I’m hoping that Christine will regain her memory even though the odds are that it seems that it won’t happen and she may lose what she remembers the next day even though she is keeping a journal. 

        The story moves along nicely as we see Christine having flashbacks that lead her to some answers.  The story moved nicely for me with that and made me wonder where the story was going.  It was a very unpredictable ride right down to the end.  To me, the concept of the story was great since it involved someone having amnesia.  

         Most of the reviews for the book seemed good on Goodreads.  There were some one star and two stars on Amazon.  Many of them said the book was boring or was not well written or the who story was unbelievable.   I think that no matter what, there will be some one and two stars ratings over 1,000 people read a book.  I can’t say that I agree with those reviews.  

         My thought is that this is fiction and the author did his job of moving the story along nicely and gave it a good ending.  As I said earlier, I think that the concept of using amnesia in a story is something that a lot of people like since you can find yourself rooting for the protagonist to get his or her memory back.  To me, the story was entertaining and lived up to be one of the best books of 2011.  I really enjoyed this book and wish I can give it more than five stars.  


Ron Hummer