Review: Sleep With the Lights On (Brown and De Luca #1) – Maggie Shayne

Sleep With the Ligths On by Maggie Shayne
Series: Brown and De Luca #1
Published by Harlequin MIRA on 24 September 2013
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Thriller
Pages: 384
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley

Through the eyes of a killer…

Rachel de Luca has found incredible success writing self-help books. But her own blindness and the fact that her troubled brother has gone missing have convinced her that positive thinking is nothing but bull.

Her cynicism wavers when a cornea transplant restores her sight. The new eyes seem to give her new life, until they prove too good to be true and she starts seeing terrifying visions of brutal murders—crimes she soon learns are all too real.

Detective Mason Brown's own brother recently died, leaving behind a horrific secret. In atonement, Mason donated his brother's organs, though he's kept the fact quiet. Now he wants to help Rachel find her brother, but when he discovers the shocking connection between her visions and his own brother, he suddenly has to do everything in his power to save her from a predator who is somehow still hunting from beyond the grave

*I received a free ARC of Sleep With the Lights On from Harlequin MIRA via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review*

Sleep With the Lights On is one of the best thrillers I’ve read in a very long time! Brilliantly written, the suspense always building, wonderful characters, a little romance and a lot of danger. It really has a lot of the things I’m looking for in a great read. Even the prologue hooked me – it was as if I could not put the book down from the very first lines of that, and I could hardly sleep because I wanted to get up and continue reading. I needed to know what would happen next, and how Rachel and Mason would deal with the way their lives had changed so much.

The two main characters, Rachel and Mason are from different worlds, but they have a lot of things in common anyway. At the beginning of Sleep With the Lights On, Rachel is blind, and she’s at the police station to try to get someone there to look at her brother’s missing person file. When nobody is willing to help her, she leaves in a huff, even if she is supposed to be the queen of self-control and positive thinking. As she leaves, she walks out on the street without stopping and has a small accident with a police car – driven by Mason. Mason has big plans to see Rachel and also to help her with her missing brother. Only, he gets a mysterious text message from his own brother, and comes home to find him just at the moment he pulls the trigger to kill himself on Mason’s couch.

In the aftermath of his brother’s suicide, Mason finds out that Eric is a serial-killer, and that’s the reason he killed himself. Not wanting to tell his family, Mason hides the evidence, then goes on to persuade his family to donate Eric’s organs as a way to redeem himself – and his brother. Rachel gets Eric’s corneas and strange things instantly start happening. Those things scare her so much she doesn’t even know what to do, until she talks more with Mason, and at the same time she finds an organ reception support group where other people who have gotten a new organ get together once a week and talk about it.

The mystery is about the fact that the killings don’t stop, and at the same time, Rachel can actually see some of the things the killer does, at the same time he does it! Sleep With the Lights On really made me want to sleep with the lights on as well, it’s creepy in the best way, and I loved the way the story was moved forward. Mason and Rachel are great characters, they both have their demons, and I love how snarky they both are, some might even find Rachel to be a bitch, but she’s the only kind of bitch I enjoy reading about!

There really isn’t anything I didn’t enjoy in Sleep With the Lights On, the writing is good, the showing is awesome, the characters are well fleshed out and grow – even some of the secondary characters showed growth – and I was so happy when I found out there will be more stories about Rachel and Mason. Their chemistry is pretty awesome, and I hope that will continue to be featured in Wake to Darkness which will be released in December. I have a little theory as well, but I’m not going to share that here, and I have been careful to not spoil anything for you guys at all!

Now, go to amazon and use your one-click finger, read Sleep With the Lights On and let me know how much you loved it! Please! If you like thrillers at all, you’ll love this one.

But when the sun took over, the mountains changed. The lake water that had been murky and green, sparkled and danced in the morning light. The forest came to life, no longer deep and foreboding, but green and lush, the ground beneath the trees, dappled in light and shadow.

Eric backed out and closed the bedroom door. The digging intensified. The scratching rat inside his brain had caught the scent, and it was demanding to be fed. And the meal it wanted this time was Eric’s own son.

Mott hadn’t even shown up. Him and his idea that being blind was something to be proud of. Like we should have a freaking parade. Blind Pride. Fuck that. If I could see, i damned well wanted to.

I smiled at the rhyme. “Perceptive Detective is hot on my trail. I stupidly wish he was after ma tail.”

Saving it all for me over coffee? god, I hope not. Knock it off. You want to go out with him, remember? No. I want to want to. But I don’t really want to. Clear as mud.

I decided it was time to pull my head out if its hideyhole and face reality. Never face a reality you don’t like. Create a better one instead. Had I really written that? God, I was an asshole.

“We’ve got chaperones, Rachel. You’ll be perfectly safe. I promise not to try to seduce you.” “You think I’m worried?” “Come on, soothe my pried, act worried.” She smiled. It was an unwilling smile, but in a second it was full-blown and he had to return it. “You know you could charm the socks off a centipede, right?” she asked. “I’ve been told as much, though never in quite those words.” And he’d never expected to hear it from her.

“I didn’t know that.” I was starting to like this guy. You know, as a person, not just as a sex object.

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