Are You Awake?

Product Information

Ok so this could've been a guilty pleasure read but McGowan punched above the belt by making Mary a lawyer who didn't know the law from her left foot. Mary a mother of two young children and Tim her neighbour think that they see someone being attacked in a flat across the road. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Mary has two young children and is awake through the night, not remembering the last time she fully slept. 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.

I usually find the amateur sleuth trope frustrating - it’s often unbelievable how much they get involved but I found myself thinking had I been in Mary’s position I would have done the same thing - it would infuriate me how the police didn’t seem to care about their tip. The book really entertains the reader with the who did it, did they actually do it premise and I will read more in future! Although I don't suffer from PTSD, I’m a worrier and often have difficulty getting to sleep because my mind wants to revisit every single negative situation I can imagine. However, I am just not convinced that a woman up to her eyes in nappies, breast feeding, toddler tantrums and professional self-doubt would have the energy or the inclination to put a great deal of time and effort into sleuthing, given all that she is juggling! But with her marriage under strain and the police on their tail, Mary begins to doubt her own mind…and Tim’s.Mary is on maternity leave from her job as an attorney and caring for her two young children with little help from her husband.

despite Audrey's constant rants, and she thankfully blended into the background and became more of hubby's problem to deal with once he decided to be a parent instead of sleeping in when Mary more than deserved one. She’s also irresponsible in putting her children in danger at times, although she does cop to it eventually. Easy to read, if you aren’t really that into this genre and don’t read a lot then you may enjoy it a bit more than I did. I wasn't invested in any of the characters and didn't care what happened in that house, I just wanted them to find out something! The children unfortunately share a room in their pokey little two bed flat on the outskirts of London, meaning when one wakes then the other does also.A sleep-deprived journalist and a sleep-deprived mom both think they see a missing teenager in the middle of the night. Two people, unable to sleep for very different reasons, believe that they see a missing girl being assaulted in the middle of the night. As the pair are drawn into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, the culprit appears to be even closer to home than they thought. Reading about breast feeding, crying children, food being thrown, and dirty nappys always bores me to tears as a woman who is childless by choice.

However, she makes terrible decision after terrible decision that someone that smart would unlikely make. Mary an exhausted lawyer on maternity leave teams up with Tim a journalist suffering from the effects of working in a war zone to try and investigate the missing case of Sam a local teenager.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. Like sleuths, they follow the clues, try to involve the police, but with no results, and eventually are in danger for their lives. A chilling story of two sleep deprived strangers coming together to find a missing person, not knowing whether they can trust their minds. After all, you've not slept - really slept - for two years so your mind could be playing tricks on you.