Are You Awake?

Product Information

When Mary & Tim realise Samantha's disappearance could link to the disappearances of several other young women in the area over the years, things snowball. It's the usual case of amateur detectives somehow being able to outwit the police & get witnesses to talk, for example, the person they initially think is behind Sam's disappearance conveniently has a 'Road to Damascus' conversion & spills everything. The plot was okay but stretches credulity in some parts, it was interesting though & it mostly kept my attention. 3 stars

I feel like this had promise going into it. I’ve loved the author before, started off with an intriguing plot line, and then my interest sort of fizzled.I really wanted to love this book. It was a decent mystery, but everything else just fell flat for me. I am a huge fan of McGowan and will continue to read her books even though this one wasn't my favorite. I am hoping that others will enjoy it more than I did.

How can you make the MC a lawyer who asks questions like: "Wasn't it a crime to hide evidence too? But how did they even know that's what it was?" GURL??? ARE YOU ACTUALLY SERIOUS. THE BAG BELONGS TO A MISSING GIRL. OFC IT'S EVIDENCE. AND YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT'S A CRIME. HAVE YOU NEVER WATCHED CRIMINAL MINDS?? EVEN A LIL NCIS??? CMON!!! Convinced the “missing woman” who has been all over the news is being held captive there, they team up to investigate after the local Police, don’t feel that the tip they call in is credible enough to even visit the property in question.

Member Reviews

They inform the police but don't get far. Both believe that a missing woman may have been the victim in the incident they both witnessed. They decide to do their own detective work when they get nowhere with the police. From the bestselling author of What You Did comes a chilling story about a missing girl and two potential witnesses. They both think they saw her. But can they trust their own eyes? This book is quite entraining and gripping. I enjoyed reading it over the course of a few weeks (on and off) and it succeeded in keeping me interested in the book and the fate of the characters. What I will say I liked how she portrayed Mary, and the feelings she has about being a new mum struggling with her new role in life, I feel she captured that perfectly and did not go down the easy route of PND instead showing how you can have these feelings without it being something deeper, she actually showed a bit humour in this which made Mary less 2D than the other blah characters. Also liked the slight cosy crime feel I got from both Mary and Tim with their amateur detection though am not sure if the author meant them to read like that I suspect not.

Claire McGowan is a well-established author who penned her first book in her native, Rostrevor when she was only nine years old. When penning her first novel, McGowan was still in primary school, and she admits that the novel was not interesting at all. 19 years later, McGowan wrote her first novel, The Fall, which ensured that she made a name for herself in the Northern Ireland’s list of top notch writers. According to McGowan, her first novel, The Fall was completely a surprise to her because when penning it down, she completely had no idea that she was working on a crime fiction novel. This is mainly because Claire McGowan believed that crime novels were mainly whodunits and detective novels. However, later on, Claire McGowan discovered that there were so much involved in the crime fiction genre. This story hinges upon the three Ss: secrets, surprises and suspense. It is a well-written multi-POV and well-paced story that had me questioning who I could trust and what was reliable enough to believe. Mary is a mother of two who is on maternity leave and is in desperate need of some sleep. Her children keep her up at night. Tim, her neighbour is a former journalist who suffers from PTSD and can't sleep at night. These two are separately looking out the window one night and think they see something sinister occurring in one of the (abandoned) homes across the street. There is also a girl missing from the neighbourhood. Mary and Tim later bond and try to piece together what they saw that night and begin to connect it to the missing girl. I enjoyed the premise of two strangers coming together in the dead of night to solve a kidnapping. The author did a really great job of setting the witching hour scene and anybody who finds themselves awake through the night will really empathise with the characters. The feelings of loneliness and tiredness, and not being sure if you can really trust what you see.All the remarks about the middle east. Yes there are war zones in some places in the middle east, but it is not all that it is. And this book is full of micro-aggressions that I felt personally as an Arab. I do like Claire McGowan's books, but this took a while to grab hold of me. It settles down into what feels like quite an old-fashioned adventure whereby Mary and Tim, finding the police less than helpful, set about their own amateur investigation into the disappearance of a nineteen-year-old girl, Samantha. There are plenty of twists and turns along the way and ultimately it's all a bit far-fetched, but enjoyable enough. The insomnia stuff is done well, with Tim struggling to differentiate what's real at times. The mother reluctantly awake with her baby in the depths of the night gave me vibes of Celia Fremlin's classic The Hours Before Dawn (and if you're a fan of domestic psychological thrillers and haven't read Fremlin, you really should). I loved Ms McGowan's book THE PUSH. It was edge of your seat thrills. This one was good but not great. It had some things that I love and others that just didn't do it for me.

The two meet when they venture outside of their respective houses in the middle of a sleepless night after “witnessing” what appears to be “violence” in the attic room of a boarded up house across the park.This was a hard one to rate. It's a book that I didn't dislike but I didn't particularly like either. Although readers are meant to feel for the two main characters as one struggles with PTSD and the other is a sleep deprived Mother with a husband who is clueless. I mean seriously, how did he not see how tired his wife was? But do we care for them? I didn't really connect with either. I can relate to being a sleep deprived mother but that was it. Mary and Tim are neighbors who’ve never met. Neither of them sleep well, and they spend their days wishing to go to bed. Mary has 2 young children who are never quiet and keep her up all night (and an unsupportive jerk of a husband to boot). Tim can’t stop thinking about something tragic that happened in his past, and it keeps him up. The premise is what I liked best, the suburban mom who is on parental leave and trying to solve a disappearing girl case is brilliant. Set in the depths of London, Are You Awake? is a book drenched in atmosphere, suspense and deceptions. The insomniac angle is a fascinating one which I understand too well. The first half of the book is anxiety-inducingly slow in such the best possible way and gets snappy the last half. It is told mostly from the perspectives of Mary and Tim but also occasionally by a third.