😴 WHILE YOU SLEEP, Written by S. J. King; My Review‼️😴
😴 WHILE YOU SLEEP,
Written by S. J. King;
My Review‼️😴
Have you ever wanted to be a better version of yourself?
Eve Dawson would do anything to be a better mother. So when a pill promises to replace sleep with hours of extra productivity every day, she takes it. Within days, Eve is renovating the house at dawn, doing yoga before breakfast, and cooking from scratch. She is finally becoming the mother her daughter deserves.
Within weeks, she is losing her mind.
Eve doesn’t remember writing the notes left in Jada’s room overnight. Things go missing, or seem to have moved in the house. She just can’t explain it. And when Jada collapses at school, Eve realises with cold dread: something is very wrong.
Is someone else in Eve’s home at night? She and her daughter might be in real danger, and Eve can no longer trust the one person she needs most: herself.
My Review;
When I first started reding this book, it reminded me of the movie 'The Substance'. It is, kind of, a bit like the movie, to a certain extent. Eve if fed up following a divorce & trying to rebuild her life, for herself & her daughter, Jada, & stuck in a job where shes been demoted, & feels under-apprieciated, she's often tired, & cranky. Then she discovers an ad promoting a supplement called RESTLESS™. RESTLESS™ is designed to cause less need to sleep; ultimately giving its users more hours awake; to live, & be 'the best you', they can be. Eve applies for the free trial, she has to give a DNA sample, to determine if she's suitable for a longer-term subscription, & over-night, since starting her free trial of RESTLESS™, she becomes something akin to wonder-woman, - needing far less sleep, full of motivation, up & out gardening at dawn, doing up her house in her free time, & cooking home cooked meals for both her & her daughter, - things seem like they have vastly improved, & Eve wants to keep it going. She doesn't however, get her subscription, so she's taking a couple of weeks worth of pills at a time, always panicking, & filled with dread when she's only got one or two left in her pack, which is all that's supplied to her at a time, & she's always nearly running out, & that starts to affect Eve, - by this point, she doesn't want to run out, & can't see herself slipping back to the old Eve she used to be, & so this motivates her to not only look for a new job, but when an opening comes up at the company who own RESTLESS™; 'Vivid-Us', - Eve sees this as her way in; into the company, & a way to secure her on-going need & supply of her pills.
Soon Eve starts to take on more, - going back to sing with a band, getting ahead with her gardening & decorating, & she gets the job at Vivid-Us, the company behind RESTLESS ™, - although she did fabricate her CV to enable her to get the job. So, already, she had began to lie, to others, & to herself, all in the purpose of getting an 'in' with the company, & with her securing more RESTLESS ™ pills, that's she's convinced herself that are doing her so much good; so much improvement, & which she feels she needs an on-going supply of, as she cannot allow herself to run out.
Whilst at RESTLESS™, her life seems to spiral, - her life & everything in it, revolving around her RESTLESS™ pills, & her need for them. She starts to wonder if she's losing her mind, as she's found to have written notes to her daughter that she has no memory of writing, she feels that although she's always on the go, her projects don't get completed, & she starts to see things; reflections, tricks of light, out of the corners of her eyes when nothing is actually there. Then things become fractured between her & her teenage daughter, Jada. It's discovered that Jada has dabbled in taking RESTLESS™, & also another genetic version of the drug, known only as 'DOME', which leads her to collapse at school, & Eve gets called in for a meeting with the school councillor, who threatens Eve with involving the authorities. Eve is scared of the authorities getting involved, & having Jada taken away from her, or having her abusive ex-husband back in their lives, - who Eve also now knows Jada is now back in contact with, - so she starts to question things. Has she done right by Jada? Are the pills causing her memory lapses? Has she become an addict, & a liar, like her abusive, alcoholic, ex-husband? She's already started lying, & stealing pills from her workplace, - & soon, - although she's only been taking RESTLESS ™ for five weeks, & you're supposed to be on them for 6 months before being considered for having the implant, - she goes ahead & has the implant anyway, already doubting herself; knowing the risks, - but she believes it's worth it to stop the week by week taking & issuing of the pills, & feels it's safer than having pills left around the house for Jada to discover, & feel tempted to take. When the generic drug, 'DOME', starts making headlines for deaths caused by taking the drug, Eve brushes it off at first as it being an unregulated, unsafe replica of the drug she endorses, RESTLESS ™, - but soon, when hidden codes & documents are discovered on a computer at her workplace, linking RESTLESS™ to DOME, - she fears that Vivid-Us, has given out an incorrect recipe for the generic drug on purpose. She then discovers diary entries from her daughter, who has been back in touch with her dad, & she feels that she is losing her, & losing her, to him. Not only that, but soon after getting Jada a Saturday job at Vivid-Us, in the wellness center, - which was supposed to give her daughter more experience, & teach her to have more responsibility, - she discovers that Jada has been skipping school, & has been used as a trial subject for a teen version of RESTLESS™. Eve is far from happy to discover this, & things then take a turn for the worse, when she confronts them about the teenage drug trial, that has been trialed on her daughter, only to be told that she had signed & given her consent. But that's when she's revealed as being a their, stealing pills from the company, & fabricating her CV in order to get her job at Vivid-Us in the first place. She is forced to sign an NDA, & she loses her job, but at this point, all she wants is to protect her daughter, - little does she realise that the protection needed to protect Jada, & who from, lies much closer to home.
Eve escaped an abusive relationship with her ex-husband, & she got both her & Jada away from him safely, with him having no contact, but through Jada's concern for her mother, Jada gave her dad a spare key, & it's revealed that he'd been letting himself into their house, still toying with Eve, & then, with the help of both Josh, & Jada, she learns that it was her ex-husband who set her up to be targeted by the RESTLESS ™ ads in the first place, & that he had plans to prove her an unfit mother, & to take Jada away from her. Jada has seen the real side of her dad, & she sticks by her mum. Josh & Jada work together to remove Eve's implant, & get her free of the drug RESTLESS ™, that has consumed Eve for so long, - but in the end, Eve is glad to be free of it, & is glad to be back to her old self, & a sense of normalcy. She's just happy that she has Jada, - they have grown closer together, - & that she now has a good friend in Josh.
This book looked so promising, & did grip me from the outset. It was a compelling read, even when it got a bit scientific orientated, it kept me reading, wanting to read more, to find out what happens. I found at times it did fluctuate between Eve's state of mind, & then her complex relationship with her daughter, - but I think the way in which this was written, was purposeful, - in portraying Eve's increasing paranoia, & her ever freying state of mind, & her memory lapses, the longer she was on the drug. It also highlighted the similarities between her on the drug, & her ex-husband, - both addicts; to diffent vices, but both liars, & manipulators, - which is what RESTLESS ™ turned Eve into.
Based on a rating of 1 - 10, where 10 is the highest, I would have to give this book a rating of 5. Overall I did enjoy reading it, & finding out what happened, but at times it felt a bit too scientific, & at others, felt like it was dragging on, & then the ending seems a bit too soon/rushed. I would deffo recommend it as a good read, & it would be interesting to hear what others make of reading this, - so feel free to leave a comment here on my blog after reading this, so we can compare,- & I welcome the feedback!
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