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 Adventures of Lord Bolingbroke by Joshua Catchatoor

    Book Details: Author: Joshua CatchatoorRelease Date: 3rd November 2022Series: A Comedic Tudor Tale (Book #1)Genre: Adventure, Humor Fiction, British Humor, Novellas, Historical, and Tudor PeriodFormat: E-book Pages: 105Publisher: Blurb:Herein you will find a comedic romp through the English Renaissance, in which the titular Elizabethan courtier…

  • Book Review: Death By Greed (A Josiah Reynolds Mystery 18) by Abigail Keam

    Book Details: Author: Abigail KeamRelease Date: 27th March 2023Series: A Josiah Reynolds Mystery (Book #18)Genre: Cosy Mystery, Murder MysteryFormat: E-book Pages: 210Publisher: Worker Bee Press Blurb:Josiah is working in her honeybee yard when she hears a commotion coming from a horse…

  • Book Review: The Chippendale Letter by E T McNamara

    Book Details: Author: E T McNamaraRelease Date: 23rd May 2022Series:Genre: Historical Romance FictionFormat: E-book Pages: 444Publisher: –Blurb:From the author of The Puzzle Pieces and Fate’s Final Destiny comes a two-generation romantic novel set against World War 2, the Vietnam War, and America’s space race.…

  • How To Get Your Kids To Reduce Screen Time

    With new technology everywhere, it’s hard not to watch TV constantly, play video games, or be on an iPad, laptop, or some other device that keeps you distracted from life. This is especially true for children.…

  • Online Game Review: Money Games by Mortgage Calculator

    Recently, I had the amazing opportunity to play some really interesting online games. These are not just any games, but business-related games! So basically Mortgage Calculator simply combined the two things most people love — money…