The Reading Bud

Book Blog by Heena Rathore-Pardeshi

Book Review: AWAKE: Notes from the Quiet Hours by S.A. Sterling

Book Details:

Author: S.A. Sterling
Release Date: 26 October 2025
Series:
Genre: Memoir
Format: E-book 
Pages: 70 pages
Publisher: –
Blurb:
2:47 a.m. Again.
For two years, she woke in the quiet hours—when the house slept, when the world felt suspended between night and morning. In that stillness, she began to write.
AWAKE is a collection of sixty nights lived in real time: the hum of insomnia, the weight of perimenopause, the questions that surface at 3 a.m. when defenses are down.
These pages don’t offer solutions. They offer presence.
For anyone who’s ever felt alone in the dark hours, this book is company.

Review

Rating: 4 out of 5.

AWAKE: Notes from the Quiet Hours by S.A. Sterling is a gentle, meditative, and moving memoir.

Told through short entries written during real bouts of insomnia, AWAKE reads like a midnight journal, part memoir, part meditation, part conversation with yourself. Author Sterling’s writing covers drifting thoughts from the small rituals of staying awake to ponderings on motherhood, ageing, marriage, memory, loss, and the strange kind of clarity that only arrives when the world is still.

There’s a beautiful rhythm to the entries. Some nights are fleeting with a single page of observation about her hands or the hum of the fridge, while others open like essays about belonging, identity, or the ache of loving people from afar. The language is spare but lyrical; each sentence feels distilled, honest, and unadorned. What makes it powerful is the intimacy, that rare feeling of being trusted with someone’s unfiltered 3 a.m. thoughts.

Author Sterling’s greatest gift as a writer lies in her ability to turn exhaustion into revelation. She writes of menopause, motherhood, migration, and midlife with a rawness that never feels self-pitying. There’s humour here too, and grace in the smallest acts: warming her feet, watching the rain, whispering “you again” to her reflection at 2:38 a.m. By the end, you realise AWAKE is about awareness, about being fully alive even in the quietest, most uncertain moments.


You can also read this review at:

Goodreads


Amazon


I love reading your comments, so please go ahead…

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

I’m Heena

Welcome to The Reading Bud, my cosy corner of the internet dedicated to all things books and authors. Here, I invite you to join me on a journey of discovering under-represented books, independent and small press authors, and all things book with a touch of love and loud purrs. Let’s get Reading!

Book of the Month

Read this captivating story on the adventures and hardships of Frank Knightlite, a man who strives to illuminate darkness with his lantern in search of answers to life’s questions.
You can get it here.
December 2025
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  

Reading is like breathing to me.

Recent Posts

  • Audiobook Review: If It Bleeds by Stephen King

    Author: Stephen KingNarrator: Will Patton, Danny Burstein and Steven WeberRelease Date: 21st April 2020Genre: Short Stories, Horror, Thriller, Dark FictionSeries:Format: AudiobookLength: 15 hrs and 12 minutesPublisher: Simon & Schuster Audio Blurb:If it Bleeds is a collection of four new novellas —Mr. Harrigan’s Phone,…

  • Book Review: The Sweeny Sisters by Lian Dolan

    Author: Lian Dolan Release Date: 28th April 2020Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Family & RelationshipsSeries:Format: E-book Pages: 304Publisher: William Morrow Blurb:Angels…Death Stalkers…ReaAn accomplished storyteller returns with her biggest, boldest, most entertaining novel yet—a hilarious, heartfelt story about books, love, sisterhood, and the surprises we discover in our…

  • Book Review: Earth Angel: : Hell Hath No Fury When an Angel Gets Mad By Chris H. Stevenson

    Author: Chris H. Stevenson Release Date: 23rd April 2020Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Mystery, SupernaturalSeries:Format: E-book Pages: 229Publisher: Aisling Books Blurb:Angels…Death Stalkers…Real or imagined…Twenty-one-year-old Daryl Victoria and her fiancé, Dean Fowler, a rookie detective who has been working on a serial killer case that involves the murder…

  • Book Review: Billionaire Boss, Undercover Affair by Kyra Radcliff

    Author: Kyra RadcliffRelease Date: 17th March 2020Genre: Romantic-thrillerSeries:Format: E-book Pages: 178Publisher: Dawn Hill Publications Ltd.Blurb: Susan Johansen is efficient, ambitious and cool-headed in a crisis, which is exactly why her boss, Charles Dunlap, needs her. As the successful owner of one of the richest…

  • Book Review: How Languages Saved Me: A Polish Story of Survival by Tadeusz Haska and Stefanie Nauman

    Author: Tadeusz HaskaRelease Date: 24th September 2019Genre: MemoirSeries:Format: E-book Pages: 148Publisher: Koehler BooksBlurb: “When I was arrested my whole world crumbled. I knew that leaders of political parties had been arrested, and never heard from again. My only chance at survival was to find…