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

  • Book Review: The Fog Ladies by Susan McCormick

    Author: Susan McCormick Release Date: 9th June 2019 Genre: Cosy Mystery Series: A San Francisco Cozy Murder Mystery (Book #1) Edition: E-bok Pages: 332 Publisher: The Wild Rose Press Blurb: Young, overworked, overtired, overstressed medical intern Sarah James has…

  • Book Review: Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey

    Author: Tessa Bailey Release Date: 11th June 2019 Genre: Contemporary Romance Fiction Series: Hot & Hammered (Book #1) Edition: Paperback Pages: 400 Publisher: Harper Collins India Blurb: A brand new romantic comedy from New York Times bestseller Tessa Bailey! Georgette…

  • Book Review: Those Days In Delhi by Yashodhara Lal

    Author: Yashodhara Lal Release Date: 10th August 2019 Genre: Contemporary Fiction Series: Edition: Paperback Pages: 304 Publisher: Harper Collins India Blurb: Delhi in the Nineties. And this time, it’s going to be Gudia’s summer. So what if she’s the…

  • Book Review: Sidney Sheldon’s The Phoenix by Tilly Bragshawe

    Author: Tilly Bagshawe Release Date: 13th June 2019 Genre: Thriller, Suspense, Speculative Fiction, Mystery Series: Edition: Paperback Pages: 432 Publisher: Harper Collins India Blurb: Thrilling and nail-biting, The Phoenix has all the trademark glamour, suspense and unexpected twists of…

  • Book Review: Come Home, Daddy: An Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Memoir by April Enciso

    Author: April Enciso Release Date: 7th September 2018 Genre: Memoir Series: Edition: E-book Pages: 103 Publisher:  Blurb: This is a story about my father’s struggle with Early-Onset Alzheimer’s. We were living the American dream. My father ran his…