Title: Sleep Tight
Author: Rachel Abbot
Publication Date: February 24, 2014
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Pages: 300
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I don't often read mysteries. In fact, I believe I have six books on my Goodreads "mystery" shelf and the other five are by Dan Brown. But as I was browsing the Kindle Lender's Library, I came across this book. The cover was spooky and the description sounded promising. I mean, the last line is "Sleep tight - if you can. You never know who's watching." Chills.
So, I decided to try something new, and it definitely paid off.
From the very beginning I was hooked. The first word I wrote down was "tension." It starts with Olivia in panic mode - her kids are missing. Right away there's no clear way of knowing who to trust or who the "bad guy" is. Much of the mystery is easily solved in the early chapters, however.
By chapter two, I had Robert figured out (yeah, so he's insane), by chapter three, I had a pretty good idea of what had happened to Olivia's parents, and by chapter ten, I thought I knew what was going on with Olivia's disappearance. Still, there were a few huge revelations at the end of the book that I had not expected (at all).
The writing style was different, switching often between chapters from first to third person and between storylines about Tom and Olivia. While it was a little off putting at first, the constant switching had me turning pages late into the night to figure out what happened to Olivia and her children.
Apparently, there are previous books in this series, which revolves around DCI Tom Douglas, but I don't feel like I've missed anything terribly important by starting in the middle of things. There were personal details inserted here and there about Tom and his associates and perhaps those are explained in more detail elsewhere, but I was truly reading only for Olivia's story.
I give this book a 4 instead of 5 primarily based on what I felt was a too-clean last chapter (combined with the early predictability I've already mentioned). Everything came together perfectly, though not necessarily happily. Overall, this was a fantastic read and I'm thrilled that I gave it a chance! I hear Abbot's first novel, Only the Innocent, was excellent as well. I may have to give that one a try soon.
