The Accident

Great book, took me a couple of chapters to get into it but then I was hooked until the end!

This book started off slow, then got good, then the ending was poor. I like some twists from these type of books, and there was no twists. The ending felt a bit muddy too. It could have been a good book if the ending was different.

Book DescriptionThis secret is killing me.It's only one line from her fifteen-year-old daughter's diary, but Susan knows it means everything. Charlotte is smart, popular, and beautiful. She is also in a coma following what looks like a desperate suicide attempt. What's more, Susan has no idea what compelled her daughter to step out in front of a city bus.Did she really know her daughter at all? In her hunt for the truth, Susan begins to mistrust everyone close to Charlotte, and she's forced to look further, into the depths of her own past. The secrets hidden there may destroy them both.My ReviewSue is plagued by her abusive past at the hands of James Evans. In the present day, she is trying to find out why her daughter is in a coma from purposely walking into the path of a bus. The story switches between the past and the present until the point where they collide into the present. There are lots of twists and turns which kept me turning the pages until the tension-filled ending. I found this book to be very well-written and entertaining. I will definitely seek out more books by C.L. Taylor and I highly recommend this book to those who love psychological thrillers.

Sehr spannend und vor allem realistisch.

4.5 stars.

Before I Wake is an intriguing psychological thriller about a mother's frantic search for answers about the reason for her fifteen year old daughter's suicide attempt. This compelling novel is full of unexpected twists and turns and the skillful use of an unreliable narrator by C.L. Taylor adds another layer of mystery to the unfolding drama.

What would induce Susan "Sue" Jackson's young, pretty and vibrant daughter Charlotte to deliberately walk in front of a bus? Haunted by this question and the certainty that fear is keeping Charlotte in a comatose state, Sue's search for answers begins with Charlotte's dairy. One line reverberates over and over in Sue's mind and convinces her to continue digging for the truth. She uncovers a shocking web of lies and deceit that lead her to frightening suspicions about the people in Charlotte's life. But as she delves into her daughter's personal life, it soon becomes clear that the secrets from Sue's haunting past may not be buried as deeply as she believed.

In the beginning, Sue seems like any ordinary middle-aged wife and mother. Her anxiety over Charlotte's health is reasonable but allusions to a past "episode" coupled with her growing paranoia raise doubts about her mental state. Diary entries from a previous relationship years earlier provide valuable insight into a recent event in Sue's life and they also explain her growing panic about mysterious packages and brief but terrifying of glimpses of someone from her past. Wild accusations and increasingly erratic behavior lead everyone to mistrust her assertions but Sue doggedly pursues the truth until she uncovers a horrifying and quite possibly, deadly plan.

Before I Wake is a clever and perplexing debut novel by C.L. Taylor. The characters are multi-faceted with all too human flaws and frailties. The intricately plotted storyline is incredibly complex and frighteningly realistic. A series of red herrings and misdirects coupled with the increasing doubts about Sue's reliability effectively obscure the truth and the story culminates with a highly dramatic and adrenaline filled ending.

This was the first book I had read by this author and I will diffidently be searching for more. I'll have to admit that I didn't think I was going to care for it in the beginning. The story interweaves diary entries with flashbacks. At first I just didn’t get the connection but once it settled down and I kept reading, it became clearer. There is so much good stuff in this action-packed novel. The author does an excellent job of showing the horror and fear of being in an abusive relationship and how difficult it is sometimes to leave it behind and start over. Overall this will appeal to thriller fans and for those who love an action-packed ride.

A 3.5 star read for me. While I liked the mystery of what happened to Charlotte and I can usually roll with unreliable narrators, I found Sue & her diary entries of the past to be irritating. This was definitely a page turner but once the past and present converged this was a crackfic hot mess and I kept reading to see how far the author was going to take this. If I'd known this was how the book was going to read, I'd have saved it for a vacation beach read. It was that kind of melodramatic. Still, I'm glad I read it as it's been on my TBR list for some time and all in all, I'd read another book by this author.

Before I Wake is C. L. Taylor's debut novel. And I have to tell you - it's really good. Present day. Susan sits by a hospital bed, hoping her comatose daughter will wake up. It was a dreadful accident, Charlotte stepping out in front of the bus like that. Or so Susan thought until she found Charlotte's diary - and the cryptic line - "This secret is killing me." Taylor then cuts the narrative to the past and we are privy to Susan's diary, before she married and had Charlotte. The journal is troubling and worrisome, giving the reader a good idea of where Susan's life might be headed. We want to shake Susan out of her fantasy world but we can only keep reading as things deteriorate. And just at a pivotal moment, Taylor switches back to the present. Susan needs to know the secret her daughter was keeping. Maybe, just maybe, by discovering the truth, she can help Charlotte wake up. But her attempts to ferret out the truth have her lying to her husband, badgering Charlotte's friends and more. She begins to dig up small tidbits of information, but no one believes her. In fact, they all think she's having an 'episode'. After all, it wouldn't be the first time would it? Present day Susan is an unreliable narrator We just never really know if she is telling the truth or telling the truth as she imagines it to be. But her earlier diary is quite the opposite. And is in fact, quite frightening in the scenario that Taylor portrays. Taylor's characters are all quite well drawn and definitely evoke reactions from the reader. Although the main plot idea has been done before, Taylor adds enough spin to make it her own. I quite enjoyed the past and present timeline and the cliffhanging chapter endings. The suspense starts in the first few pages and doesn't let up until the very end. (Although, it did keep me reading long past the time I should have shut off the light.) Before I Wake was an excellent psychological suspense read. Taylor herself has a degree in psychology and that knowledge is used very effectively at building her story, in both timelines. A recommended read and I'll be watching for Taylor's second book.

Sue Jackson's daughter, Charlotte, walked in front of a bus and is now in a coma. Sue's husband, Brian, believes it was an accident but Sue thinks there is more to it than that and sets to trying to find out what really happened. Sue has demons in her own past which she also has to deal with.The story is told by Sue which really helps to ramp up the tension in this novel as she desperately tries to get to the truth, and there are diary entries from 20 years earlier which tell the reader what Sue had to deal with in her past.The Accident is a fantastic psychological thriller which I read in 2 days. I raced through the last half, unable to put it down as the sense of foreboding grew.This is such a good debut novel which I found exciting to read and I think the author has a good career ahead of her.Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for allowing me to review this book.

It's obvious that a fiction book called 'The Accident' and marketed as a suspense thriller is going to be about something more chilling than a simple accident, and so it proved with C. L. Taylor's crime debut.The premiseSue Jackson is horrified when her teenage daughter, Charlotte, deliberately steps in front of a bus. Weeks later, as Charlotte remains in a coma, Sue reads her daughter's diary in the hope of finding answers. Instead, she finds only a frightening question: what was the secret Charlotte could no longer bear to live with?My thoughtsFrom the opening pages, the first-person narrative successfully creates suspense. Sue appears to distrust her husband, sending him away on an errand while she asks her comatose daughter whether or not her secret has to do with him. As the relatively short chapters fly by, it becomes clear that Sue is paranoid and unable to trust even those closest to her, but it is also clear that husband Brian is lying to her. Could he have harmed Charlotte? Or is the truth more prosaic?Sue's paranoia means she is a difficult character to empathise with initially. Her husband previously had an affair with a younger woman, but her willingness to believe that he has committed incest is difficult to credit. Taylor aims to alleviate any potentially negative reader response by interspersing chapters following Sue's modern-day investigation into Charlotte's life with entries from Sue's diary entries.Written twenty years previously, the diary entries focus on Sue's developing relationship with James. Initially I found this switch in focus a little disconcerting, but as both plot lines develop, a nice rhythm builds up and it is to Taylor's credit that I never found myself simply skimming one narrative thread in order to return more swiftly to the other.The trajectory of Sue and James' relationship is rather predictable and I became frustrated with her justifications for him, but I felt it was (sadly) a largely realistic representation. (Taylor explains in a sort of afterword that she was involved in a similar relationship, so she has some personal insight here.) The predictability wasn't a problem because I was still interested to see what would happen next and the storyline did help to make Sue's 43 year old character more understandable.Sue's investigation is largely carried out by conversation, particularly with her daughter's friends and boyfriend. None of these characters want to talk to her, so much of Sue's time is spent trying to exert pressure on them to reveal what they know. This is certainly more realistic than some crime novels where characters suddenly become super-sleuths whose knowledge of some hobby or friends in particular places help them to achieve what an ordinary Jane or John Jones couldn't. This means the story goes back and forth a lot as Sue gets a snippet of information here, a snippet of information there, and has to return to question the same friends over and over. Some readers may find this approach to crime-solving less compelling than a more CSI-style approach.The conversational structure does make Sue's urgency striking in contrast to the more typical concerns of her daughter's school friends, who just want to avoid being reported to their mothers. She's gradually revealed to be a disturbed and unreliable narrator with a history of mental illness whose husband tries to insist she take anti-anxiety medicines, but just as the reader begins to wonder whether Sue herself poses the greatest threat to Charlotte, there's a chilling development...Final thoughtsTaylor successfully creates an atmosphere of menace throughout the 400 pages of the kindle edition, which is perhaps particularly impressive when evaluated in light of the fundamentally domestic nature of events in the novel. This is another example of the recent trend for 'domestic noir' - dark fiction where the home is the source of unease and danger.Sue's predicament is crucial to this feeling of menace and the book is a chilling addition to the vast body of fiction which features women in deadly scenarios who are not believed due to (perceived or actual) mental illness. Although the book features a character with PTSD, domestic abuse and anxiety, Taylor isn't aiming to explore the issues involved; they're simply part of the storyline. This isn't intended as a criticism, just an observation; the story is intended to create suspense, not engender discussion.The storyline was a little far fetched in places - it's almost like Taylor thought 'How could I make this even more dramatic and creepy?' - and James' character risks becoming a bogeyman rather than a genuine threat. I thought this was a bit of a shame and would have preferred greater ambiguity around his character. I didn't feel that the climax of the main story was predictable, though in retrospect, if I had properly applied myself to thinking about it I feel I could have worked out the finale from about two-thirds of the way through. Of course, the joy of an unreliable narrator is that you can never be confident about your guesses, so even Iif a reader could anticipate the ending, it would only be as one if several possibilities and shouldn't spoil the overall reading experience.Once Sue has uncovered the secret, events happen quickly and, in a brief final chapter, everything is settled. I think I would have preferred a different ending, with less action, but Taylor's ending at least resolved everything quickly and neatly without pages of tedious explanation. The book is a suitable length, feeling neither too long or too short, and is self-contained. (This was a plus for me as I dislike reading what I think is a standalone book only to find that it ends on a massive cliffhanger and I'm now expected to read volumes 2 and 3.)The marketing blurb claims the book is 'fast-paced and suspenseful...perfect for fans of Before I go to Sleep, Gone Girl and Sophie Hannah'. Tick, tick, tick...I should love this. It is fast-paced and suspenseful, but 'Before I go to Sleep' was more chilling, 'Gone Girl' was cleverer and Sophie Hannah's novels are far more concerned with the inner psychological workings of her characters. (Her endings would never dismiss motives in as few words as Taylor's does.) This isn't to say that Taylor's debut isn't a good read, simply that it isn't quite as compelling as the works the marketing department have compared it to.Overall I did find this quite gripping - I read it within two days - and would be happy to read Taylor's next novel, 'Before I Wake', though I'd be perfectly content with a library copy; I didn't find this book sufficiently compelling to think that I might want to re-read it, though that's not really an issue since it only cost 69p (currently reduced from £6.99) and takes up minimal space on my Kindle. This is also available as a paperback, though I'd be tempted to look for an offer rather than paying the £6.99 RRP, because I'm not sure many readers would want to re-read it. (The climax is memorable and with this kind of suspense story, where all the focus is on getting to the climax rather than on, say, character development, once you know the ending there's little value in re-reading.) The kindle version includes book club questions and a conversation with the author. I didn't feel these added anything to the package, but I suppose it's always nice to get some extras.Read this if:- you enjoy domestic noir and stories that focus on normal people enduring abnormal circumstances;- you enjoy suspense stories that focus on moving along the plot rather than on characterisation or setting;- you are looking for an undemanding, easy read to while away sme time.Avoid this if:- you are irritated by stories which use diary entries that are able to reproduce whole conversations between characters;- you prefer suspense thrillers with lots of action or potential for consequences stretching beyond a family unit;- you would find domestic abuse too difficult to read about.

The Accident is a fast paced psychological thriller from debut author, C.L. Taylor.Desperate to understand why her comatose 15 year old daughter would deliberately step into the path of a bus, Susan Jackson begins a frenzied hunt for clues amongst the secrets her daughter kept from her. As Susan slowly begins to piece together information from Charlotte’s diary, phone and friends, shocking evidence of betrayal and blackmail begins to emerge, along with ugly secrets from Susan’s own past.The author nurtures an uneasy atmosphere from the first few pages of The Accident, building mistrust and dread as the story unfolds. Surrounded by secrets and lies, Susan doesn’t know where to turn or how to make sense of the information she learns but is certain she can find the truth, even if everyone else believes she is simply chasing ghosts.Taylor quickly establishes Susan an an unreliable narrator, Susan is deeply distressed and confused as you would expect of a mother whose child is lying in a coma but it soon becomes obvious that she is also unusually neurotic, and paranoid. While the present day, first person narrative communicates Susan’s growing nervousness and fear, it’s Susan’s journal excerpts from 22 years earlier that helps to explain why she is so anxious.A well crafted thriller, The Accident is fast paced and tense, culminating in a dramatic conclusion. A strong debut, I’d recommend it particularly to those who enjoyed Kimberly McCreight’s novel, Reconstructing Amelia.

This book was a tremendous treat, recommended for fans of suspenseful mysteries with unreliable narrators like Alice LaPlante’s Turn of Mind or S.J. Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep. I received an advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley (THANKS NETGALLEY!). It is due for release in a just few short months - on June 1, 2014 – perfect timing for those going on vacation and looking for the perfect book to sprawl out with in the sand this summer. It just might be too addictive for vacation though. While I was reading it, I got so wrapped up in it that I read the second half of the book all in one night, staying up far too late, adding to my now perpetual state of zombie-like sleep deprivation. (Babies are things of wonder and joy, but HOLY CRAP they are a lot of work – as in, I now have no life because the baby is my life, and the simple joys in like…sleeping on your own schedule or even sleeping at all…don’t have much of a part to play in this new life with my baby. But, I digress.) My point is – I missed out on a few hours of much needed sleep because I couldn’t tear myself away from this book – and that’s saying something.With books of this ilk, it is typically best to let them speak for themselves; the less known about them, the better – especially this far in advance of its publication date – so, I’ll be brief and above-board in my synopsis. Susan, a middle aged seamstress, is married to Brian, a middle aged politician. They are parents to Charlotte, your typical angst-ridden, secretive fifteen year old. Except, normal fifteen year olds don’t walk into traffic, staring a fast approaching bus driver in the face, bringing about a life-threatening coma and horrible injuries. Naturally, her parents are distraught, but after Susan finds her daughter’s dairy and reads of a terrible secret that could have contributed to Charlotte’s presumed suicide attempt, she turns amateur detective, trying to uncover reason behind this disaster that has torn her family apart. The thing is – Susan doesn’t have a history of the most stable mental health, and her daughter’s secret threatens to unhinge her once again. As Susan delves into her daughter’s deep secret life, her own dangerous past becomes mingled with her current reality. The narrative bounces between the present day detective work and entries from Susan’s old diary where she chronicles a tumultuous romantic relationship with a past boyfriend named James. Is Susan’s past finally impacting the future of her and her family, or is she looking for clues to something that just isn’t there?Before I Wake is a page turner guaranteed to grip fans of both mystery and suspense. A rock-solid recommendation.