Anna O – Matthew Blake

Published By: HarperCollins
Pages: 400
Released On: 01/02/2024

Anna Ogilvy hasn’t opened her eyes for four years

Not since that night at The Farm when she was found asleep with a kitchen knife in her hand, her clothes bloodstained, the bodies of her two best friends lying close.

She’d committed the crime of the century – but nothing and no-one could wake her from the nightmare.

Believers in her innocence call her Anna O. Believers in her guilt call her Sleeping Beauty.

But no-one can take their eyes off the story . . .

*****

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.

It seems a copout to just say this book is a good book. If you’re reading a review from someone who is obsessed with words and books and is trying to master her own writing, and who is trusted by publishers and authors with early copies of their work, you want more than “it’s a good book”. But, whilst I will go into further detail, for now, I’ll leave you with this.

This is a very good book.

Ok. Got that? Now time for the why.

I have seen how excited this book has made people and I was so thrilled to be reading an early copy of it. It’s so very enticing. If I’d started it earlier in the day I might have read it all in one sitting, it’s that addictive.

So much of the brilliance of this book comes from the unknown. Going in blind. And therefore I’ve tried my best to review it carefully, not giving too much away.

Yes, obviously, there is a plot. A very good plot in fact, but for me, this is a character study through and through. Of Anna, or the sleep expert Ben, of the mysterious Lola, of everyone mixed up with this case past and present, and it is so good. Everyone is exactly as they should be. We know a lot about some, and too little about others, playing perfectly into Matthew Blake’s hands.

Whilst we do hear from other characters, our main two POVs are Ben and Lola. Ben is our main protagonist, the sleep expert working on the Anna O case, learning everything he can in order to wake Anna up. And Lola…well, I can’t say too much about Lola, that’s best read for yourself, but the two of them are great contrasts.

It’s not just written in a straight forward linear narrative. We have the present POV, we have diary entries, medical notes, blog posts, online comments – all fitting perfectly to unravel this complicated story.

You end up questioning everything and everyone almost from the off, trying to work out what happened and what can happen at the same speed as the characters, which was fun. It has so much depth and so many layers, full of quirks, how can Matthew Blake have kept up with all he was creating? I’m in awe. I was second guessing myself constantly and still ended up in the dark.

Whilst it is a piece of fiction, there is a lot of factual information in it that I found really interesting. The science about sleepwalking and conscious vs unconscious and whatnot that I wanted to start researching myself, which I found fascinating.

It’s a whodunnit with a difference. It’s twisty and turny, full of red herrings and complications. I struggled to figure it out like any good murder mystery. But by having a suspect whose been asleep ever since the crime, it turns the genre on its head and it’s such a refreshing read.

Did I believe Anna was actually guilty? From the off, no I didn’t. I can’t say exactly why. I’m obviously not going to say whether she is or not or give away any of the plot, but my gut instinct from the off was that she was not the person to blame. That she was a third party who someone else used in their vulnerable state to, literally, get away with murder. Which meant that I was rooting for her throughout the story desperate to be proved right.

I won’t mention the actual sentence of course, but whilst reading this there was a bit that mentioned the Neurological condition that I suffer from, and whilst that won’t mean anything to anyone else, it was quite a morbid novelty to see it there because it seems that no-one has ever heard of it before.

It’s a quiet thriller. It’s not 100% all systems go go go in your face kind of thriller. It’s not a full-blown scary one, someone breathing down your neck, rushing you, kind of thriller. It’s a slow thriller. Building up enough tension to put you under stress. It eats its way into you and before you know it, you’re looking over your shoulder, frowning, desperate to get through to the end. It’s very difficult I think to write a quiet thriller, which makes it even more impressive to me.

I do advise that you don’t read it on a late evening when it’s pitch black outside, whilst you’re on your own in a silent house, when there’s wind and rain pouring outside making everything sound ominous and scary. That’s where it goes from a character study to a thriller.

I have seen the odd critical review for this book. I completely understand that not all books are enjoyed by everyone, and every one person cannot love all the books they read, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But I can’t believe how this can be anything but a 5 star read (and I don’t usually give star ratings), and a must-read for 2024 and beyond.