Liz Nugent

Strange Sally Diamond

Well written but very unsettling and not really for me 

Anna Concannon 

thriller books are not good for my heart and i love it.

Leyla Gulsen

I really enjoyed the dual POV of Sally Diamond, and the second person being someone you slowly discover later. I loved seeing Sally develop throughout the story. This would be a great book to be a movie, because when I think back on the book, it truly does feel like a movie. The writing was great to describe everything around in detail, but just enough to continue the plot. A great read!

This book was not quite what I expected and it certainly took some risks in the narration... but it did not pay off. The pacing was a little all over the place and any time the narration switched away from Sally's P.O.V., I could not help but think that we are yet again, here, trying to tell women's stories - the stories of women who have experience the worst forms of abuse by men - through the monsters' eyes. I get why this could be compelling for some but I believe you have to work really hard to not give the reader a tired take that feels edgy for the sake of edginess.

And I get that the novel was aiming for paralleling Sally's and Peter's abuse and exploring how it later impacted their lives, and how they chose to define themselves. But Sally's narrative is so much stronger and more convincing than Peter's that the latter, combined with the way the former tends to just speedrun through some events, ended up feeling like unnecessary padding. Then Sally's thematic development - that the novel markets itself on, that it is a chance for her to define herself - is ruined by the ending where circumstances take her choice away from her. Or I guess she has always been that one thing and she could never become anything else - but not in a tragic, cathartic way, just in a way where she is yet again defined by what others have done to her.

The beginning was excellent, though. It had such a great promise and an opportunity to explore so much abt identity and trauma and - should the author had chosen to, because I feel like she avoided focusing on this on purpose though it also being a pretty significant drive of the action towards the end - the impact of people's fascination with the macabre.

This book was not quite what I expected and it certainly took some risks in the narration... but it did not pay off. The pacing was a little all over the place and any time the narration switched away from Sally's P.O.V., I could not help but think that we are yet again, here, trying to tell women's stories - the stories of women who have experience the worst forms of abuse by men - through the monsters' eyes. I get why this could be compelling for some but I believe you have to work really hard to not give the reader a tired take that feels edgy for the sake of edginess.

And I get that the novel was aiming for paralleling Sally's and Peter's abuse and exploring how it later impacted their lives, and how they chose to define themselves. But Sally's narrative is so much stronger and more convincing than Peter's that the latter, combined with the way the former tends to just speedrun through some events, ended up feeling like unnecessary padding. Then Sally's thematic development - that the novel markets itself on, that it is a chance for her to define herself - is ruined by the ending where circumstances take her choice away from her. Or I guess she has always been that one thing and she could never become anything else - but not in a tragic, cathartic way, just in a way where she is yet again defined by what others have done to her.

The beginning was excellent, though. It had such a great promise and an opportunity to explore so much abt identity and trauma and - should the author had chosen to, because I feel like she avoided focusing on this on purpose though it also being a pretty significant drive of the action towards the end - the impact of people's fascination with the macabre.

Strange Sally Diamond

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