What's the one book that you've stayed up into the early hours to read?

[FlorencePennnywell]

Despite having to get up early or whatever .. what is the one book that you simply couldn't put down as you needed to know what happened next or you were just thoroughly engrossed?

Beartown by Fredrik Backman. I NEEDED to know what happened, and it did not disappoint.

How Not to be a Boy by Robert Webb in more recent years and Jane Eyre as a kid.

Yes, very much a stay up all night book.

Reading Salem's Lot absolutely terrified me but I couldn't put it down, I stayed up way too late with it.

Snow Falling on Cedars. Bought it, started reading it, read all afternoon, read it as I cooked dinner and carried on reading until I finished about 2am.

Hotel - dated now but a real page turner.
Maynard's House - hugely scary and well written.
French Exchange with Rubies - reminds me of a school trip I did.
Why we eat too much - a real eye opener.
The Great Cholesterol Con - the reason I wouldn't take a statin.

The Passage by Justin Cronin. Was totally gripped

Not a book but.... MumsNet....

Probably around 50 years or so ago - The Poseidon Adventure... I remember lying in my bed throughout the night reading the book to get to the end. This was before the film was a hit the cinemas....

East Of Eden - John Steinbeck. I read it into the small hours, fell asleep, and grabbed it to carry on reading as soon as I woke up. I was about sixteen, and had just seen the James Dean film.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Dark? 😁

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. So many twists. I just had to know how it ended.

Ha just seen I'm not the only one!

One from decades ago as a student living in Paris I read Germinal by Zola (in English). So engrossed in the whole climax I missed my metro stop and my next class.

@HoboHippo

Yes! One of the best TV series ever made I think. Especially in the Science Fiction category.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit could not agree more!

The Exorcist
Had to keep it on a table in the hall because I couldn't sleep with it in the bedroom

Shadowman by John Katzenbach

I came across this thread last night after finishing FingerSmith (which I could not put down either!) I was looking for another recommendation.

I also stayed up all night reading Harry Potter years ago but have not found anything like it since.

That is one of my absolute all time favourites. Read it so many times.

So I’m going to order now :

The Neverending story
A little life
White Mischief
Project Hail Mary

It’s a (wo)man’s world by Stella Beake. I wanted to see if the world ended in equality or not.

It's funny, but whenever I read a classic I find myself hooked and eager to know what happens in the end. I find that with Jane Austen, Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, etc. There is a reason novels like Pride and Prejudice have stood the test of time. Very few 20th-century novels ever hook me that way. I admire Virginia Woolf, for example, but can't say I've ever been eager to know what happens. Somebody once said that the novel reached its peak in the middle of the 19th-century, and that it's been in decline ever since. I don't know if that's true, but I do find that modern novels lack something. I don't know what it is – heart and soul? Epic scale? Commitment? Something is missing.

I quite agree.