Just when I thought I had figured it all out, Pinborough pulled the rug out from under me once again! Clever, tense and intriguing - Insomnia might just be this talented author's best book yet. Highly recommended.

OMG! This book is AWESOME! I didn't think Sarah Pinborough could ever outdo the brilliant #WTFThatEnding in Behind Her Eyes but her new novel, Insomnia, is even better (in my humble opinion). I even experienced temporary insomnia as I was up all night reading this fantastic book - I just couldn't put it down!

Emma has to be the most unreliable narrator I have ever come across; with her 40th birthday approaching, she can't sleep and believes she is losing her mind…just like her mother. Strange things are happening to Emma, her husband is distant, her children are afraid of her and her estranged sister has just turned up. Emma's whole world is falling apart but is she doing it herself or is someone else to blame?

I'm not going to go into any more details of the stunning plot so I don't inadvertently release any spoilers, but it is breathtaking. The shocking scene from the prologue was never far from my mind as it was very cleverly woven throughout the novel and I found myself holding my breath in anticipation as the story played out.

I love Sarah Pinborough novels as you really can expect the unexpected so the big reveal is pretty impossible to predict. I had absolutely no idea which direction Insomnia was going in but I simply couldn't read it fast enough to find out. I absolutely LOVED it and if this one isn't picked up by Netflix too I will be very surprised.

A stunning, addictive and intensely gripping novel, prepare to be up all night with Insomnia. Insomnia has to be the must-read book of the year, and it's not even the end of January yet!

I chose to read a digital ARC received from the publisher via NetGalley and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

Emma and Robert have a lovely life. Emma is a divorce lawyer, well liked and successful with hopes of becoming partner in her firm. Robert is a stay at home husband, caring for their children Chloe and Will. Emma is fast approaching her 40th birthday , and Robert has plans to make it one to remember. Unfortunately Emma wants to make it one to forget. This is not due to vanity, but because of a long held secret regarding her mother.

As the birthday gets closer, Emma begins to lose sleep. Convinced there is someone in the house, she starts to wander around in the night, constantly checking the doors and windows, looking in on her children and imagining someone outside. As the problem escalates she also experiences “lost” time, coming to suddenly and realising she has zoned out. There is also an unexpected visit from her sister Phoebe, with whom she has a sporadic relationship. This all puts a massive strain on her marriage, with dire consequences.

I actually read this in one day, enjoying the plot and greedy for what happens next. Then it started to get a little confusing, and I’m glad Nina was brought into the story to explain it all! There was also a lot of repetition which didn’t help the story to flow. This didn’t stop my enjoyment of the book, but lost me a little.

Thank you NetGalley.

A brilliant psychological thriller that also touches on the paranormal. Emma Averell is a wife, mother and a highly successful solicitor who deals with divorce settlements, she is very proud of what she has achieved despite a traumatic childhood that saw her and her sister taken into care when their mother had to be sectioned after trying to smother her sister. Her mother's mental health had been deteriorating as she approached her 40th birthday and now Emma was approaching her's she starts to get paranoid that she might go mad too, This leads to insomnia and irrational behaviour, her sister turns up out of the blue which doesn't help and in fact intensifies her worries. Emma loves her children above all else but she starts to be overprotective along with her other obsessive habits. There is so much to this book which I absolutely loved, it is suspenseful with lots of tension and I was totally gobsmacked by the ending.

This was my second Pinborough novel after Behind Her Eyes. I have to say that whilst I thought Behind Her Eyes was decent, I wasn't blown away by it like some people were. However her writing was good and I was pleased to be approved to receive an ARC of her latest work.

Emma has suffered a traumatic childhood at the hands of her mother who went 'crazy' around her fortieth birthday - not sleeping, hallucinating and acting in an increasingly bizarre fashion culminating in Emma being taken into foster care along with her sister Phoebe.

Emma is now slowly approaching her fortieth birthday and when she starts suffering from insomnia, she begins to wonder if she is following the same pattern as her mother......

I was very intrigued by this book for a number of reasons. Firstly was the fact that insomnia within novels has been done to death. So I was interested to see how well Pinborough dealt with this trope often found within novels. For me, she handled it well and the parts of the story which dealt with Emma's lack of sleep were genuinely creepy and unsettling. Watching her life spiral out of control was difficult to read and was expertly written.

A really dark, unsettling but satisfying novel from a clearly talented writer.

Thanks to HarperCollins and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

I have read 2 of the author's previous novels and although I really enjoyed Cross Her Heart I was not overly keen on her debut Behind Her Eyes. Insomnia is a similar atmospheric and dark psychological thriller. As Emma approaches 40 she fears that her own insomnia and behaviour is a sign that she is about to experience a breakdown as her own mother did as she approached her 40th birthday. Emma is an unreliable narrator who I found it hard to connect with and for me this was a tedious, repetitive and slow paced read that lacked tension.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

A gripping, dark story with interesting and troubled characters. The author expertly weaves a tale of intrigue that got my head spinning trying to work out what was real and what was the protagonist’s paranoia.
I did not guess the ending and enjoyed the twists throughout.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Emma is happily married with 2 children. She is a successful lawyer who, approaching age 40, is hoping/ expecting to be offered a Partnership in the Law Firm.. We follow her through the 12 days leading to her birthday. Things in her life do not seem quite right when her estranged elder sister turns up unexpectedly. What can she want? Memories of their mother at this age return and haunt her. Emma is sleeping badly, forever seeming preoccupied. Criticism and complaints fly about her behaviour. She denies all knowledge of the incidents referred to but privately Emma is anxious about the complaints. Could she have perpetrated the alleged incidents and yet have no recollection? Is she on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Is she repeating her own mother at this age? Will she too go insane?
To fathom just what is happening you will have to read this excellent book with all its twists and turns. With its uncertainties and resulting tensions in relationships.to find out. It will grip you through to its challenging climax.
Sarah Pinborough is, once again, at her very best. What else is there to say beyond. " Highly Recommended." . .

Ooh this book was sooo good! That good that I started it and finished it in the same day.

Emma is a successful business woman, wife and mother. She is the main bread earner which was nice to see the roles swapped with the husband being the stay at home dad and the wife going out to work to pay the bills. When we meet Emma, her life is about to unravel out of control.

Whilst I may have the odd sleepless night, I can only imagine how bad insomnia must be. To grab at most the smallest amount of sleep each night, well I wouldn’t be able to function. In Emma we have an unreliable narrator as she struggles to know what is real and what is in her head due to the sudden lack of sleep at approaching her 40th birthday. The finger of doubt as to the strange things and sometimes dangerous actions going on in her life, had me pointing at everyone, even Emma herself!

Insomnia is a fabulously mess with your head type of read. The author will have you doubting and suspecting everyone! There are some wickedly good twists with secrets and lies in abundance which will keep you glued tightly to the pages. A superb psychological thriller that will keep you up well into the night!

Another brilliant mind-bending book from Sarah Pinborough!
Guaranteed you will stay up all night reading Insomnia - the author has created a dense, suffocating and heart racing follow up to her excellent Behind Her Eyes with a twist that will make you gasp.

Wow!! What a story, there is so much on offer that you question who is telling the truth and who isn't for so much of this book

Creepy AF! This book had me HOOKED! Addictive reading, I had no idea where it was going and could not put it down! 5 stars.

Emma Averell is days from her 40th birthday. It's only a number I hear you say, but for Emma it links back to her childhood and events that happened when her mother turned forty. Emma is now a successful divorce lawyer, with a loving husband, two children and good friends. She was only 5 years old when her and her sister were put into care and she has since kept her childhood memories separate and locked away from her life now. Approaching forty, Emma is now finding life a struggle and finds herself unable to sleep and having vacant moments where she can't remember where she's been or what she's been doing...

For me, this book was a little slow to begin with, and I have to admit I did find myself confused with Emma's flashbacks to her childhood and what happened to her mother. As the book moved on however, the story became much more fast paced and I found myself hooked into Emma's story. The author has done a great job of building up the suspense and tension as the book moves on and I actually found the book very chilling at times. The plot twists and turns and keeps you wondering whether Emma is suffering from the effects of her Insomnia, whether she is losing her mind or is she turning out just like her mother.

It is a complex storyline and I found I did have to concentrate, particularly at the beginning, to keep up with Emma's story. It did keep me guessing throughout though and I raced through the last few chapters to find out what was going on! The ending was well planned and thought out and I certainly didn't see where the story was going until it happened. It's a dark, twisty storyline which will keep you on the edge of your seat!

This psychological thriller lives up to its name! You'll be kept awake turning the pages. If you actually want to get some sleep, I wouldn't recommend reading it at bedtime...

The story is narrated by Emma, a lawyer who seems like a calm, organised type. However, as her fortieth birthday approaches, her life starts to unravel. She had a traumatic childhood and thinks of her abusive mother as dead, rather than confined to a secure mental unit. Now, her sister, who she doesn't get on with, is back on the scene. Her young son is frightened of 'mummy', a nightmare figure. Emma can't sleep. She seems to be suffering from hallucinations, lost time and memory lapses. She's reciting weird things. In fact, she's displaying the same symptoms her mother had. What's going on and what will happen at the end of the countdown to her birthday?

I thought this was a very intriguing novel. The characters were believable and the psychological element very well done. I guessed one of the twists early on, but the other major twist, which had a supernatural hint, certainly surprised me. I kept noticing how often wine was mentioned, something it has in common with Behind Her Eyes. Pretty much every chapter had the characters gulping wine. The other annoying thing was the cliché of a storm brewing to heighten the psychological tension and then the storm breaking during the action scene / final confrontation. It's been done so many times, particularly in films, that it doesn't work for me.

In summary, I recommend this thriller, which I liked more than Behind Her Eyes but not as much as Cross Her Heart.

Thank you to the publisher HarperCollins for the advance copy via NetGalley.

[NB. This review will be on my blog, 25th March]

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Average but to be honest I was disappointed having loved the other book I’d read by the author.

The book was slow going, I found the characters all to be annoying or unlikeable, there were too many ‘as if’ storylines and a lot of repetition - I think we read three times about what happened when they were children.

****SPOILERS AHEAD*****
This novel made me wonder all through the reading, how would the author (who I admire, btw) make everything work. Because you soon realoze that it'd be near impossible to have all the happenings explained in a reasonable, scientific way. It would not work, simple as that.

However… we are talking about Sarah Pinborough. She is such a gifted writer that as soon as yourealize what was really going on you just buy the idea. It makes sense, in a really sad way. I felt so sorry for Patricia... An entire life wasted for something that only happened because she was trying to prevent it from happening.

I'd like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Sarah Pinborough is my go-to author for stories that bring out the horror inherent in everyday life. I consider myself very lucky to not suffer from insomnia, but I know that for those who do, nights spent fruitlessly trying to sleep - and days after, operating on no rest - are one of those horrors. It's a curse that's being visited on high-flying lawyer Emma at the start of this book, just as her oh-so-perfect family begins to fly apart and she faces her fortieth birthday.

That birthday is often seen as a watershed, but Emma has a special reason to dread it: at the same age, her mother Patricia had a breakdown and tried to kill Emma's sister Phoebe. Thirty five years later, Emma is experiencing the same symptoms as Patricia - insomnia, blackouts, an obsession with a random string of numbers, and a compulsion to wander the house at night checking that doors and windows are locked. Add to this that Emma's 18 year old daughter Chloe seems to be acting out, that her 5 year old son Will is suddenly afraid of his mother, and that husband Robert is distinctly unsympathetic to Emma's worries, and Insomnia is a potent mix of internal and external stresses.

We get to know Emma as she tries to navigate these stresses (as well as learning more about her background and history). She's a person who has made superhuman efforts to erase her distressing past - to the extent of telling her family, friends and employers that her mother died all those years when she didn't - and her first instinct, as things begin to go bad, is to clamp down harder, to try to control everything and everyone, herself included. I'm not going to tell you how that goes, you'll have to read the book, but I will say that Pinborough is just superlative here at exposing how Emma unravels. Insomnia keeps the reader both needing to know what happens next, and dreading to see exactly how much worse Emma will make things for herself. The tension is simply electric, the situation more and more complex and intractable, the stakes higher and higher.

At one level, it's a portrayal of a woman driven by demons from her childhood, trying to work out what went wrong all those years ago so that she can put it right and protect her kids.

At another, we see a deeply paranoid and scared woman doubting herself and her own sanity, lacking any place of safety or support network. Most of her circle are in the same competitive business milieu as her, or excel as near Stepford wives. Emma is already out on a limb.

And at yet another level, there are the pressures of modern life: a husband who's not very supportive (he comes over to me as a bit of a pudding), a boss who sees Emma as arm candy as much as a talented and hardworking individual, kids who are, well, you know, kids.

With these so many threats and concerns and these three different sources of stress, clicking round like dials on a safe, there must be a risk that everything will line up, the door swing open, and some very nasty secrets emerge. But what are they, and how can Emma keep them locked away? Should she even try?

As with all Pinborough's writing, the tension simply oozes off the pages of a book you MUST read and one which, once begun, will gnaw at your reading brain till you get to the end. As a central character, Emma is simply magnificent. I didn't actually like her very much to begin with. As a divorce lawyer, she regularly throws other women under the bus to advance her career her clients seem to be middle aged men with an eye for younger replacements - yet it's clear she is doing what she has to advance in a very patriarchal setting. And Emma's impulsiveness and attempts to distance herself from her past - including her mother and her sister - seem reckless to put it mildly. But as the story developed and Pinborough's nuanced characterisation wove its spell, I felt for Emma more and more - including sharing her fear that she might, in one of those moments eh can't remember, have done something truly terrible.

Bound to be one the highlights of the 2022 reading year.

I absolutely raced through this compulsive novel with an inbuilt (and intriguing) ticking clock: Emma is about to turn forty, and worried that she will go mad like her mother did. Her growing insomnia and unravelling grasp on reality mirror what happened to her and her sister under her mother's unstable - and increasingly abusive - care. Or do they? This is a book with multiple twists, dead ends, possible suspects and Sarah Pinborough absolutely walks the razor edge between the possibility that Emma is being set up - and that she is a dangerous woman on the brink of doing something terrible. I found it utterly compelling, and the denouement was one that I never saw coming. A truly bold narrative choice, and one which will stay with me for a long time. Highly recommended!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the loan of this book.
Sarah Pinborough is a genius writer. "Behind her Eyes" was outstanding and was made into a series for TV. Cross her Heart and Dead to Her were also amazing so I was eager to read her latest installment. I wasn't disappointed. Sarah somehow manages to bend the mind of the reader to such an extent that you feel like you are the one with Insomnia who thinks they're going insane, like the main character, Emma. Emma has had a troubled childhood which she has buried deep, keeping it from her husband and children. Her mother lost her mind and tried to smother her sister, which resulted in them being taken into care. As her 40th Birthday approaches, a milestone that Emma dreads, (this was the age her mother tried to kill her sister) her behavior becomes increasingly erratic and disturbing. Is the past repeating itself and she's losing her mind like her mother? Or is there other forces at work? Prepare to be surprised!
I love how the author adds an element of the supernatural in her books, it makes it more intriguing and mysterious. I would definitely recommend this book, or previous Sarah Pinborough books as they are always surprising and complex. She is one of my favourite authors and I always look forward to reading her books. This one was no exception and I devoured it. A must read!

Sarah Pinborough has done it again, I couldnt put this book down and read it in one sitting. This was so well written with well developed characters and a relatable and believeable storyline. This book was dark disturbing and gave me goosebumps the whole way through. It was unpredictable and kept me guessing right until the end. A really enjoyable read.