SLEEPLESS by Romy Hausmann

 Finished Sa 11/4/23

This is one of my recent purchases at Amazon Books. I received the novel on Tu 9/26/23. I got the book because I saw 'DEAR CHILD' (Netflix series) and was really impressed with the concerpt. This was a tale of a woman and children who had been kidnapped and held for many years. The book only concentrated on how it affected the victims and not very concerned about who did the crime and why. Usually, these type of books follow the perpetrator. 

'SLEEPLESS' is far to intentionally confusing. There are a couple of different storylines, at least two timelines, and each chapter is told from a different character's point of view. The writing is great and I could appreciate each individual scene, but the 'big picture' was beyond me.

STORY ONE: A young woman lives in a B & B with her grandfather and they watch old movies on a video cassette recorder during the long evening behind the night desk at the hotel. When she gets older she becomes involved with a man who dumps her. 

STORY TWO: A woman stabs her lover to death and contacts her husband for help. She tells her husband that she was trying to end the affair and her lover could accept this and tried to kill her. Her husband believes her and they develop a plan to pin the murder on somebody else. 

I'm only partially convinced that this is what happened and I don't like books that you need a scorecard to keep track of what's going on. 

Romy Hausmann is a great writer and I'd read something else if I could. I llistened to a podcast by the man who translated the book from German and I learned that she is writing a collection of 'True Crime' stories. 

From the book's page at GoodReads:

"t's been years since Nadja Kulka was convicted of a cruel crime. After being released from prison, she's wanted nothing more than to live a normal life: nice flat, steady job, even a few friends. But when one of those friends, Laura von Hoven--free-spirited beauty and wife of Nadja's boss--kills her lover and begs Nadja for her help, Nadja can't seem to refuse.

The two women make for a remote house in the woods, the perfect place to bury a body. But their plan quickly falls apart and Nadja finds herself outplayed, a pawn in a bizarre game in which she is both the perfect victim and the perfect murderer..."

An excellent review by a reader:

"This book is a unique enigma! It feels like you walk in the dark, collecting bread crumbs to find your way to the end of the tunnel which will lead you the bad witch’s candy house! You keep gathering missing pieces of puzzle : from different timelines, unreliable characters’ narrations.

Here are facts I gathered after reading nearly 50

pages: Nadja Kulka opens her eyes, fell from a cliff, probably pushed, suffering from concussion, blood oozing from her head, forcing herself to drive to some cottage in the woods after attracting suspicion of gas station owners. She’s carrying something in her baggage, wearing a wig( we don’t know why)

We are also introduced to Nelly Schütt by moving 5 years backwards: she’s young girl, with keen interest in black and white noir movies, working at her parents’ inn, having an affair with a married, older man which will be her ruin.

And we are also introduced Nadja’a workaholic and intimidating boss Gero and his free spirited, vivid wife Laura who was former assistant of Gero and resigned from her job to be stay at home mom to take care of her their daughter Viv!

And we also read so many letters describing chaotic mind of a woman who’s seen a therapist talking about her past: taking care of a woman named Martha! We don’t know who she is or to whom the were letters written.

All those storylines seem like separated but keep reading, be patient, the author is so smart, a mathematics genius: creating unique equations.

Eventually Nadja finds herself trapped in a very complex, dangerous game and only way to survive is confronting her past mistakes and unleashing the animal she’d locked inside!

I honestly didn’t like this book as much as Dear Child .

None of the characters were relatable. They did horrible things. They are mean, manipulative, cheater, killer, abuser, liar scumbags with psychopathic tendencies!

But this a creepy, ultra smart, well developed thriller with lots of cryptic mind games so dealing with very irritating characters didn’t affect my enjoyment!

But the bothering thing about my reading is at last third the pace was wobbled and I felt like the author had second thoughts about how she would end this story and which characters would be punished! Well, at the end she finally wrapped up well but the wobbling feeling left bad taste in my mouth!

I’m rounding up 3.5 stars to 4 enigmatic, chaotic, tragic, dark, bleak, harsh, intense stars!

I loved the author’s extremely dark and extraordinarily smart mind. I’m looking forward to read her future works."