Sleep Tight by J.H. Markert

Sometimes it’s best to ignore the Booktok hype…

SPOILERS AHEAD! This review contains spoilers, so turn back now if you’re not ready for that.

This was a disappointment. This book was SO hyped as a “scary horror”… It’s not horror. It’s like a male Freida McFadden wrote this.

While I was initially intrigued, and the story kept up the fast pace, it tripped over itself continuously.

Our main character Tess is a detective dealing with a husband (Justin) who just cheated on her, when her parents are murdered, and her little girl Julia is abducted. From there, things go off the rails.

Characters are introduced that don’t play any part in the story, there is plot hole after plot hole, the psychology is pop psychology (at best)…

Tess keeps having these flashbacks and Justin is unbelievably aggravating, telling her she has holes in her memory and trying to play therapist to his wife. He tells people about her amnesia without her consent. Justin also somehow has a badge and a gun, despite being a psych consultant for the police department???

There is drug use and abuse with no resolution from the character using the drugs. Seriously, Tess is drinking copious amounts of bourbon and stealing her dead father’s pills and then POOF happy ending.

There is a strange demonizing of drug users throughout the book. The Lost Children are apparently all drug addicts and we are reminded of this constantly, from the way their eyes are glassy, or their teeth are rotten, or their behavior…but the drug use is not explained as a ritual of the cult…so are we to assume this is a personal failure and those who are addicts are prone to cult membership? Also, does this author think opioid users just walk around chewing on oxycodones like they’re Dr. House? This was the weirdest take on addiction (and yes, I know addiction).

If you can keep up with the confusing narrative and cast of characters, you can figure the antagonist out pretty quickly. But their motives are never revealed. Was it just because Mother was crazy? Why does everyone follow her? What was her appeal? No explanation other than “satanic cult”.

By the way, what in the world is “satanic music”? This phrase was used multiple times, and yet I still don’t know what they were listening to. Chanting? Heavy metal? Deathcore? Taylor Swift? Seriously.

The story just doesn’t make sense…and I don’t mean in the “wtf did I just read” kind of way. It’s the kind that gives you unnecessary information, conflicting information, inaccurate information, and then gives you no information about the important aspects. Such as:
What the hell does Noah Nichols have to do with anything? For real. And smaller things like suddenly claiming there is barely service “out here in the boondocks” when characters were previously using mobile phones just fine in the same area.

Tess finally puts her memories together and flashes back to her clobbering a jock with a hammer, who is already dead, which throughout the entire book is completely out of character for her. And no explanation was given except that the guy groped her, and was “bad”. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve punched a guy for grabbing me, but wholesale burying a hammer, repeatedly, in someone I don’t know…seems like feminist bait. So does the talk about bodily autonomy and birth control that lasts all of a page and is never alluded to again.

Let’s not forget Justin getting away with cheating, Tess beating herself up about it, and there being no resolution except suddenly being a “happy family” when they get Julia back. OH, and “they’d gotten better at reading each other’s cues to know what the other might want” and only Tess is making this concession. What a cop out.

By the way, are all the characters except Evans white people? Like ok, fine, but I still don’t have a good idea what Danny or Eliza look like. Tess for that matter. And not one description of Benjamin Knowles eyes….really?

The only thing that saved this book was that it was fast-paced. I kept hoping to be surprised but was sorely disappointed. If you don’t mind Darcy Coates or Freida McFadden, you’ll probably like this…but if you’re looking for true horror, this is not it.

I will definitely sleep tight tonight.