Sleep

Written by C.L. Taylor

Narrated by Clare Corbett

Seven guests. Seven secrets. One killer. Do you dare to SLEEP?

‘Beware! Sleep does not do what it says on the tin: I was awake until the small hours under its dark and twisty spell.’ FIONA BARTON

All Anna wants is to be able to sleep. But crushing insomnia, terrifying night terrors and memories of that terrible night are making it impossible. If only she didn’t feel so guilty…

To escape her past, Anna takes a job at a hotel on the remote Scottish island of Rum, but when seven guests join her, what started as a retreat from the world turns into a deadly nightmare.

Each of the guests have a secret, but one of them is lying – about who they are and why they're on the island. There's a murderer staying in the Bay View hotel. And they've set their sights on Anna.

Seven strangers. Seven secrets. One deadly lie.

The million-copy bestseller is back in her darkest, twistiest book to date. Read it if you dare! Perfect for fans of Lesley Kara’s The Rumour and Cara Hunter’s DI Fawley Thrillers.

What people are saying about SLEEP:

‘Wow just wow!… I loved it’ Karen’s World

‘WOW!… Sleep!!! You wont get any if you start to read it in the evening! So be warned!!!’ Reader review

‘Superb… her books just keep getting better and better – this one was a belter!!’ Donna’s Book Blog

‘A cracking story… A heart in your mouth plot’ Books from Dusk ‘til Dawn

‘Extremely creepy, atmospheric and twisty.’ CLAIRE DOUGLAS, author of Do Not Disturb

‘Sleep will keep you up all night.’ MARK EDWARDS, author of The Retreat

‘As always, C L Taylor knocks it out of the park!’ Reader review

“Reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None… a final killer twist that is as satisfying as it is unexpected” Mature Times

“Everything we love in a thriller: creepy, tense and pacy enough to get your heart racing” Good Housekeeping

‘A perfectly written psychological thriller… filled with plot twist after plot twist… I was on the edge of my seat for every page.’ 2016 and Beyond

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Release date: Apr 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780008221041

C.L. Taylor

C.L. Taylor is a Sunday Times bestselling author. Her psychological thrillers have sold over a million copies in the UK alone, been translated into over twenty languages, and optioned for television. Her 2019 novel, Sleep, was a Richard and Judy pick. C.L. Taylor lives in Bristol with her partner and son.

Reviews for Sleep

[bookworm842 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Seven guests. Seven secrets. One killer. Do you dare to SLEEP? The story follows Anna, who absorbed with guilt, has fled her old life to start anew in the Scottish Island of Rum, where she takes up a new job at the Bay View Hotel. But not everyone is who they say they are and someone has very different plans for her. With extremely well written characters, C.L. Taylor will have you gripped from the very beginning with an edge-of-your-seat murder mystery. Ingeniously written with twists and turns to keep you guessing untill the very end. I really enjoyed this book because it is not just your typical who-done-it. Even after reading, it leaves a thought provoking curiosity. This is undoubtedly one of those books that you won't want to put down.

[linda.a. · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Consumed by guilt following a serious car crash, in which she was the driver but was the only one to escape serious injury, Anna is finding it hard to forgive herself for the accident. Her ongoing struggle is fuelled by the threatening notes she is receiving, these threaten retribution, even though an investigation has absolved her of all blame. Feeling emotionally unstable, and unable to sleep, her relationship with her partner eventually breaks down and she decides that she needs a complete change. Seeing an advertisement for the job as a receptionist at a small hotel on the Scottish island of Rum she thinks the remote location will not only offer safety from the threats on her life but will enable her to come to terms with what has happened. The story opens with letter from Anna starting “If you are reading this then I am no longer alive. Someone has been stalking me for the last three months and, if I’m dead, it wasn’t an accident…..” and then goes on to list the seven names of the guests who have booked into the hotel on a walking tour. Has one of them followed her to Scotland in order to seek revenge and murder her? As a fierce Atlantic storm relentlessly batters the island it isn’t long before the only way out of the hotel, via a ford across the river, is made impassable by flooding. With phone lines down and no Wi-Fi signal, the residents of the hotel have no means of communicating with the rest of the world and when strange, inexplicable things start happening, most of which seem targeted at Anna, fear and tension mount. I felt immediately engaged with this psychological thriller and the relentless, well-executed build-up of tension meant that, once started, I could hardly bear to put it down. The individual backgrounds of each of the residents were gradually exposed, revealing a group of dysfunctional characters for Anna to become increasingly suspicious of. I felt sympathetic to her as a character and so found it very easy to become caught up in her fear, desperation and paranoia as she felt increasingly threatened and fearful. I was impressed by the way in which the author developed her main character, demonstrating very impressively the struggles she was experiencing between her feelings of guilt, her feeling that she deserved punishment for having escaped serious injury in the accident, her inability to accurately assess which of the residents was wanting to harm her and yet her desire to move forward with her life. Equally well-captured were the descriptions of the Scottish island scenery, the frightening power of the storm, and the insidious build-up of paranoia within a group of strangers when they are unable to escape one another. However, the greatest strength of the novel for me came from the psychological credibility which under-pinned the story as the author explored the devastating effects a lack of sleep can have on the mental health of individuals, the wide range of different ways in which people deal with death, grief and mourning, and how unresolved anger and resentment can skew people’s decision-making as they try to come to terms with loss and sudden death. She very effectively captured the tendency we all have to judge people on a combination of appearances and our initial impressions of them, and then the struggle to let go of our prejudices, even when presented with evidence which challenges them! As a result of her keen observations, she evocatively conjured up the increasing tension within the group as they all struggled with being trapped in such a fraught situation, and as they alternated between suspecting others and being the one under suspicion. Although, with the exception of just a couple of last-minute twists, there were no great surprises in the plotting, this didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the story and I’d happily try another of this author’s novels. With my thanks to the publisher and Readers First for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[nicx27 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have always enjoyed C.L. Taylor's writing but I think Sleep is probably my favourite of her books so far. It's fair to say that this is not actually a sleep inducing story. In fact, I found myself staying awake that bit longer to read it.The story begins with Anna Willis and her colleagues undertaking some training. On the way back there is a nasty accident and it obviously has a terrible effect on Anna. She finds herself struggling to sleep and struggling to adjust back to her life. To get away from it all she ends up taking a job on the Scottish island of Rum, working as a hotel receptionist/cleaner. A walking tour brings 7 guests to the island and what seemed like an idyllic escape becomes a nightmare for Anna as somebody seems to be determined to facilitate her death.There are almost two separate stories here. I feel that Anna's time on Rum is quite separate to the events that went before and yet they are perfectly intertwined and kept me wondering how the past was connected to the present. I absolutely loved the setting. This is not a locked room mystery but a locked island mystery as a storm means that the guests, Anna and her boss, David, are trapped together with no way across the river and no means of communication. I have a bit of a thing about islands in fiction anyway, so that aspect worked really well for me.Knowing that Anna was sleep deprived really made me wonder if she could be trusted. Was she unreliable or was someone really out to get her. And I obviously suspected all of the guests, just as Taylor wanted me to. The denouement, when it came, was unexpected and very clever.I thought Sleep was a very absorbing story and a very twisty one. It's extremely atmospheric with the weather and the claustrophobia of the island being central to the plot. It's really a fabulous psychological thriller.

[obi2015 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

After a traumatizing experience in London where Anna was involved in a car crash and two of her passengers/ colleagues did not survive and a third passenger was seriously injured,she feels ,apart from feeling guilty, as if someone is stalking her and very soon paranoia and insomnia sets in. So she decides to leave the Metropolis and move to Rum,a small Scottish isle, where she is helping David,the owner, to run a small country hotel. A group of 7 hikers arrive in this charming hotel and they all bring their own secrets and problems. When a storm hits the island and the hotel is completely cut off things start to become a bit uncomfortable. Anna feels more than insecure and is convinced that her stalker is in the neighbourhood...It starts very slowly and I had a hard time getting into this story. Of course,the fact that I wasn't particularly attracted to Anna and that her fate wasn't a major concern to me,well it didn't exactly help. Somehow this story had all the right building stones,(storm, invisible threats ,isolated house,strangers meeting each other for the first time...)but it just lacked something. The different POV didn't help and their were some strange passages for instance:" He's dead", I whisper again. Her eyes fill with tears."Her being the whisperer... I know that this is a 4 to 5 star rating on most major sites but somehow it had all the promises but it just didn't fulfil them...

[atticusfinch1048 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sleep – Cally Taylor Knows how to twist the knife …C.L. Taylor more commonly known as Cally to us peasants really knows how to write a psychological thriller and keeps the reader hooked throughout. Each book she has written has a wonderful twist within and like a good poker player she knows how to make it hard to try and guess what comes next. You think you have the protagonist to find you are wrong then decide on the next one to be shown you are wrong again, before the reveal and the I did not see that coming!All Anna wants to do since the car crash is sleep, but with crushing insomnia and guilty, sleep does not come easily or when it does, last long enough. Unable to escape the guilt she feels she splits from her partner, quits her job and heads for the Isle of Rum up in Scotland as an assistant at a small hotel. She has only been there a couple of weeks then things start to change and not necessarily for the bestWhen seven new customers check-in they are seven customers with seven secrets, some darker than others. When someone seems to have chased to her from London and is threatening her life, Anna seems to be over paranoid to those observing. Anna cannot work out who she needs to trust and who will be the one who wants to see her dead. All she knows is that they all have a secret, but someone is lying and that is the one who will try and kill her.When a storm rolls in across Rum and cuts them off from the rest of the island, things really start to go wrong for Anna. As the storm seems to last longer than expected, the guests and Anna’s relationship with them is tested to the full, especially as this seems to be the ideal hunting ground for her potential killer. Whether she lives to see the storm out is open to question or will the killer get to her first?