While You Sleep

Our Review

While You Sleep by Stephanie Merritt was eerie and full of suspense.

The prologue to While You Sleep sets the tone for the whole book right from it’s opening line.

“It begins, they say, with a woman screaming.

You can’t tell at first if it’s pleasure or pain, or that tricky place where the two meet: you’re almost embarrassed to hear it, but if you listen closer it comes to sound more like anguish, a lament torn from the heart.”

During the prologue two young boys are visiting the reputedly haunted McBride house for a dare when one of them chickens out leaving the other to go alone. Minutes later a child’s scream echoes across the beach.

Zoe Adams comes to a remote Scottish Island seeking a temporary reprieve from her failing marriage and hopefully a chance to focus on her career as a painter. Whilst there she is renting the McBride House, located on a remote corner of the island.

Zoe is amused when she hears stories of the house being haunted. A century earlier a young widow and son died in suspicious circumstances. She is less amused by the knowledge that a young boy went missing from near the house the previous year when visiting it for a dare.

Whilst in the house she can’t shake the feeling someone is watching her. She starts hearing someone singing in the house and keeps having vivid dreams, dreams from which she wakes up naked.

Is she being haunted or is there someone in the house with her?

When Zoe first steps off the ferry onto the island she is greeted by Mike Drummond, the man who will be her landlord while she stays in the McBride house. He wants her to come the pub he runs with his wife Kaye, so she can meet some of the locals, but Zoe is reluctant wanting to keep herself to herself.

She chides herself for not realising that local people would be curious about the newcomer to the island. Whilst at the pub she realises that Mike has been warning people against telling her the history of the house and seems strangely reluctant to talk about it himself. Then she meets the local historian and second-hand bookseller Charles who invites her to his shop and tells her he is willing to discuss the history of the house with her for the price of a pastry from one of the local shops.

She soon learns that some of the locals aren’t happy that she is renting the old McBride house, they believe it is cursed or haunted and that by being there she is stirring up trouble.

Its not long before the atmosphere in the house begins to get to her and she realises how isolated she really is. Can she solve the mystery of the house before she becomes its next victim?

While You Sleep is a hard book to categorise, is it paranormal or a psychological thriller or a mixture of the two. All I know is it kept me guessing right until the end and contained some brilliant twists and I loved the way it made me doubt everything including Zoe.

Its been a long time since a book made me want to look over my shoulder while I was reading it but While You Sleep was definitely one of those books.

Our Final Rating...

Wed, 28th February 2018