A compelling whodunnit, “Sleeping with Friends” by Emily Schultz is more than just a propulsive thriller and well-developed mystery. It’s also a tale of memory and friendship.
About the Book
When Mia Sinclair-Kroner wakes from a coma, all she can remember are the movies she’s known and loved. Her college friends quickly assemble for a weekend party, in an effort to help her remember. But with old friends come old wounds, and it soon becomes clear that Mia’s accident might not have been an accident at all.
Was it Agnes, driven by her unspoken resentments? Or Zoey, who covets everything Mia has? Have the years apart only fanned the extinguished flame between Ethan and Mia, compelling him to violence? Or did Victor, who moved away, return with an agenda? Or was it Martin, the wealthy husband, who put a country estate between Mia and her past?
As old tensions and new suspicions rise, these friends must wade through their film knowledge, shared history, and everything that’s kept them apart in order to figure out which one of them is trying to end things once and for all.
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My Review
After falling and hitting her head, Mia can’t remember much of anything. She knows she’s married to Martin, her husband. She knows who her friends are too. But they are things she’s learned since awakening from a coma. She has no memory of them. Most of what she remembers are her favorite movies. She regularly confuses scenes from those movies with her actual life pre-accident.
Determined to help her get her memory back, her old college friends come together to throw a party to help her remember. However, being gathered together again brings up memories for all of them, not just for Mia. And with old memories, come old feelings that aren’t always the warm and fuzzy type. As jealousy and resentment fill the spaces between the friends more than nostalgia, so does suspicion. Maybe Mia’s accident wasn’t an accident after all. Each of the friends had a motive to harm Mia. They already suspected her less-than-doting husband, but now they suspect each other.
A compelling whodunnit filled with twists and movie references, “Sleeping with Friends” by Emily Schultz is more than just a propulsive thriller and suspenseful mystery. It’s also a tale of memory and friendship. Old friends are a treasure, and the bonds we have with them are like no other. We share memories and past versions of ourselves. But remembering isn’t always fun. Those old friendships aren’t always as good as we want to remember them being. It’s something Mia’s friends discover as they gather at her home. As they reunite to help her remember, old jealousies, resentments, and heartaches from the past resurface.
If ever a Book was a mixed bag of nuts, it’s “Sleeping with Friends” by Emily Schultz. It is — all at once — a book you can’t put down and a book with enough absurdity to make you wish you could. There are a lot of great things about it. It’s well written and easy to read with the perfect balance of description and dialogue. The characters are well-developed and believable. Their relationships and interactions with each other are as compelling as the whodunnit aspect of the book. They also create some darkly humorous scenes. (Right or wrong, I couldn’t help but chuckle at Agnes, Zoe, Martin, and the racoons.)
In fact, if the book hadn’t required me to suspend disbelief a couple of times, I would have five-star-loved-it. But as is? Eh. It’s not a bad book, but it’s not for me. If you stumble upon a possible crime scene, you call the cops, okay? You don’t gather your friends together in the parlor for what amounts to a real-life game of Clue.
Thank you to Thomas & Mercer and Emily Shultz for the complimentary ARC in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
About the Author
Emily Schultz is the author of Sleeping with Friends and the forthcoming, Brooklyn Kills Me, both from Thomas & Mercer. She is the co-founder of Joyland Magazine. Her last novel, Little Threats, was published by GP Putnam’s Sons and was named an Apple Books Best of 2020 pick. Her novel, The Blondes, released in the U.S. with St. Martin’s Press and Picador, in France with Editions Asphalte, and in Canada with Doubleday. It was named a Best Book of 2015 by NPR and Kirkus. The Blondes was produced as a scripted podcast starring Madeline Zima (Twin Peaks), and created by Schultz and Brian J Davis. Translated into French, German, and Spanish it had over one million listeners worldwide.
Her writing has appeared in Elle, Slate, Evergreen Review, Vice, Today’s Parent, Hazlitt, The Hopkins Review, and Prairie Schooner. She lives in Brooklyn where she is a producer with the indie media company Heroic Collective.
