Sleepwalking in Daylight

Book No: 61
Title: Sleepwalking in Daylight
Author: Elizabeth Flock
Genre: Fiction
Completed: 11/19/09
No. of Pages: 324
Rating: 2**/5*****

I read Emma & Me several years ago and thought it was an amazing story, so I was ready to like this book, but I really, really disliked it.

Samantha Friedman is locked in a loveless marriage with her extremely distracted husband. Looking to feel something Samantha begins a flirtation that leads to more. Her teenage daughter Cammy has been looking for happiness in all the wrong places; since learning she was adopted she has made friends with a questionable group, is taking drugs, drinking and having risky sexual encounters. Both women are desperately trying to escape their lives and eventually do, but in totally unexpected and shocking ways.

I have no problem with sad books, or books that deal with difficult subjects, but first and foremost I need to care about the characters. With the exception of Cammy there was nobody in this book I liked. Sam was so self-absorbed in her own search for happiness she does not see her daughter crying out for help over and over again. Bob the father is a one dimensional nobody that evoked no feelings in me at all. Craig, Sam’s possible boyfriend is a sneak and a liar. The only one I cared about was Cammy but her downward spiral became increasingly difficult to read. Unrelenting in its bleakness this was not an enjoyable read, after turning the last page I was just glad to be done with this depressing story.