Written by Stephanie Merritt, published in 2019
On the day I discovered Audible had a huge list of free titles, While You Sleep is one of the first I decided to give a chance. I read a brief description on Goodreads, and found it interesting enough to add it to my library. While You Sleep turned out to be a thrilling novel containing elements of romance, mystery, and the paranormal. In the end, While You Sleep was an excellent suspense tale that takes a long time to get cooking, but once it does, it's difficult to put down. I was metaphorically turning pages as fast as I could to learn the twists and truth to the story. This book turned out to be my favorite of this genre, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoys mystery books with psychological and supernatural elements.
While You Sleep is about a woman named Zoey who moved into an old Victorian manor (known as the McBride house) on a small island of Scotland. This book admittedly does have a very slow star for me. We learn a lot about the Scottish town nearby and some of its residents: the landlord of the estate, the handyman, a young schoolteacher, and my favorite, the old second-hand bookstore owner named Charles. As Zoey encountered these people I immediately got iffy vibes, like the entire town was in on a big secret and not hiding it very well. The townspeople get more and more suspicious because almost every day someone would turn up at her house (always a man) for one reason or another, in spite of the McBride house being on its own land many miles from the next nearest home.
The McBride house is a major piece of local legend and superstition on the island. The manor used to be owned by a woman named Elsa and her young son who the people of the time called a witch for living by herself (and more reasons we learn later on). The rumor is that she drowned her son in the ocean to protect him from something, but was so overwhelmed with sorrow and guilt she tossed herself into the waves as well. We learn this exposition extremely slowly and in small pieces, to the point where the information was so doled out I nearly gave up on this book in it's first third. I recommend everyone to hold firm because it does pick up in its second half, and the book becomes far more gripping.
Once strange things begin to occur, you wonder if Zoey is a reliable narrator or not. She hears the sounds of a woman moaning in pleasure and pain, disembodied singing in the house, figures standing in the distance, and receives grainy calls via Skype with no Wi-Fi from her young son Caleb 3,000 miles away. The most strange thing reoccurring with Zoey is a ghost that visits her in her dreams and seduces her in the night. She has extremely lucid dreams of a dark manly figure caressing her, tenderly touching her in all the right places, successfully arousing her on multiple occasions. She can't quite tell if these events are purely dreams or have a component of reality to them.
It is revealed that when the McBride house was inhabited by Elsa and her son 150 years ago, legends says her brutish husband who was unsuccessful at impregnating her, summoned an incubus (a male version of a succubus) to seduce and impregnate Elsa. The book hints that this incubus may still be haunting the grounds of the McBride house, which would explain Zoey's erotic "dreams." Men on the island also say being near the house turns women frisky, and was a key spot to hook up for young couples. Supposedly the reason Elsa drowned her son is that (a) she was afraid her son would turn out like his biological father and (b) an offspring of an incubus (called a cambion) would manifest his demonic side by the age of 7. The big question in a lot of this story is if Zoey is just imagining things inspired by creepy local legends, or is she actually being haunted by the ghost of Elsa and the incubus?
One of the final things we learn about Zoey is her background and what brought her to the island. She has a history of mental instability and pill popping, especially after her son Caleb died in her care from meningitis around the age of 7. She blames herself and has full blown conversations with him, something that greatly concerned her husband. It's especially creepy when you find out the Skype calls from Caleb were either entirely in Zoey's mind, or she was truly receiving ghostly calls manifested by the energy of the McBride house. Was Zoey meshing the legends of the island with the parallels to her own life which amplified her dreams and made her hear and see things that weren't there? Going between these theories was a ton of fun in the book and made me hungry to know the conclusion to everything.
In the end, Zoey follows an apparition of Caleb in to the ocean, but is rescued in the nick of time, having to be hospitalized for weeks due to near downing and pneumonia. From an outsider, this was a suicide attempt by Zoey driven by her poor mental state, but also parallel to Elsa's fate who drowned herself from the guilt of letting her child die. Charles, the bookseller, reveals to Zoey in the ICU that he was the child of Elsa all along, and was never drowned by his mother. Being a cambion gave him mild psychic powers and an unnaturally long lifespan, which explains why he is over 150 years old if he is telling the truth. I found all of these revelations to be worth the wait, and it made suffering through the first half of the book completely worth it. While You Sleep won't be for everyone but if you want a mature thriller where everything eventually has a great payoff, this novel is totally worth your time!