I should have another shelf on this site called "what the fuck?!" because that is my whole reaction to this book. And it's not in a good way.

The only thing that deserves praise, probably, is the premise. Maybe S. J. Watson watched Drew Barrymore's 50 First Dates movie and had his "Aha!" moment. Maybe he thought, "What if I write a story like 50 First Dates, but everything goes wrong?" and just went with it. The premise of someone waking up every day with no memory for the last two decades could be an interesting idea. But in the hand of S. J. Watson, it turned into something tedious, repetitive, and very close to becoming unreadable.

Christine Lucas, the protagonist, is downright unsympathetic. Even with her whole ordeal of memory loss and everything, I cannot warm up to her, I can't get myself to care about her. She's just that unlikeable. She spent paragraph after paragraph lamenting how her body expands, how she's getting fat, how her skin sags, blah blah blah like it's the end of the world. It just reeks of fatphobia, and it's annoying when she has a much bigger problem. Maybe this is the classic women-written-by-men issue, maybe it's just bad writing.

Also, how she says bad things about all the food she sees irks me so much. "The fish is dry", "the cake is bitter", "the lamb is overcooked", blah blah blah. Not gonna lie, I truly wanted to shove food down her throat to make her choke and shut up. She's written like someone who deserves to perish.

And the plot. Oh my god, don't get me started on it. Someone already gave a lengthy rant about the storyline so I won't. But in conclusion, "Before I Go to Sleep" is not a good book. Even the 'plot twists' people seem to swoon about are not well-written ones.

I got a headache thanks to this goddamn novel.