While You Sleep

While You Sleep by Stephanie Merritt. New York: Pegasus Crime, 2019. 315 pages (electronic edition) ****

"It begins, they say, with a woman screaming " Zoe Adams has traveled from Connecticut to a remote Scottish Island in the hopes of finding herself and reclaiming her life as an artist. At the local Pub the townspeople hint at stories better left unsaid which only serves to pique Zoe's interest. Zoe found the McBride house to rent on the Internet and is bemused to find out that since it has been remodeled, she is the first tenant. Zoe is so exhausted from her trip that she falls asleep fully dressed only to wake from an erotic dream to find herself naked in another room. How did she get there, it was a dream wasn't it? Zoe seeks to uncover the secrets of the old house and discover what happened to Ailsa McBride and her mysterious son over a century ago. Just last year a boy disappeared while he and his friend dared each other to go into the house late one night. Alisa's husband dabbled in the occult and have the two of them unleashed a demon attached to the house? The townspeople relish their superstitions about the past and gossip about Zoe while ignoring the signs of evil around them. Zoe is determined to prove that she is not unstable and that there is a human behind the pranks being played on her in the house.

Part gothic novel, part mystery, complete with romance, sex, ghosts, murder, and demons. Merritt hints at past actions overshadowing the present, but in this breath-taking novel, she keeps us guessing at who is to blame. This is one of those books when finished, the reader says, "I didn't see that coming."


I received an ecopy for a review.


"Stephanie Merritt has worked as a critic and feature writer for a variety of newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television. Writing as S. J. Parris, she is the fastest-growing historical crime writer in the UK, with her series of thrillers set in Tudor England selling over half a million copies. She currently writes for the Observer and the Guardian. Her first novel, Gaveston (Faber), was published in 2002 and went on to win a Betty Trask Award. She followed it with Real (Faber) in 2005, which she adapted for film for Gabriel Byrne’s production company, and her first non-fiction, The Devil Within (Vermilion), a memoir of depression and recovery that was shortlisted for the 2008 Mind Book Award.

In 2008 she decided to combine two of her literary passions, history and crime, and started writing Heresy (HarperCollins), the first in her series of historical thrillers under the pen-name S.J.Parris, featuring the 16th century heretic philosopher and spy Giordano Bruno. It was published in 2010 and was followed by Prophecy, Sacrilege, Treachery and Conspiracy, and a novella, The Secret Dead." To learn more about Merritt. 

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