To be honest this story just was not for me. I found it confusing at times and hard to follow. It took me a bit of time to read through the story. It is intriguing and I do encourage others to give it a chance because it could be the best thing they have read.

More of a literary mystery novel than a thriller. There is a real trend of rather focusing on the crime itself or even the victims, of focusing in on after effects (Boardchurching?) of the crime. This can be done very well if every character has a real voice. I liked the various perspectives and range of ages of those affected. I did not feel like she tied all of the threads and characters together as well as she could have. I don't think everything needs to be tied up in a neat bow but the ending seemed rushed.

There were a few clunky scenes but I feel like this is an author to watch.

Nicola Maye Goldberg’s Nothing Can Hurt You is another novel in a growing subgenre I’ve seen developing in literary mystery novels. For decades, mysteries have focused on solving the crime. Some bold writers choose to tell the story from the perspective of the victim. But now I’m starting to see novels that explore the emotional ripples that spread from a murder to family and friends two or three levels removed from the victim and the killer. Nothing Can Hurt You may be the most diffuse example of the genre I’ve seen yet.

The central crime of Nothing Can Hurt You is, fittingly enough, much more complicated than one usually sees in a mystery. Unlike so many other murders, the one in this novel was not committed for any of the usual motives like money, revenge, jealousy, or even because the killer was a psychopath. In 1997, Blake Campbell killed his girlfriend, Sara Morgan, while under the influence of LSD and while not under the influence of the medication he was supposed to be taking for his schizophrenia. Because the murder wasn’t intentional, Blake was acquitted: not guilty by reason of insanity.

Where other novels might keep the focus tightly on Sara’s family or the police or even a prosecutor, Goldberg shows us characters like Katherine, who meets Blake at rehab and learns that he killed his girlfriend, or Blake’s niece, who was born after the fact but who exhibits troubling behavior that might indicate that she inherited her uncle’s mental illness. The only characters with a close “connection” to the murder are the unhappy housewife who stumbles across Sara’s body while walking off an argument with her husband, and a woman who was once babysat by Sara—at least until Goldberg starts to show us vignettes of Sara’s life before she was killed.

The effect of novels like Nothing Can Hurt You, I think, can be extraordinarily powerful in getting readers to think about the real-life consequences of murder. For the most part, I believe that mystery fans—myself included—read novels about murders because we like puzzles and because we like to see justice serviced. It’s incredibly satisfying to see evil punished in this world of ours. Nothing Can Hurt You instead makes us look at a situation where justice is impossible. How do we deal with a killing caused by drugs, where the murderer really didn’t know what he was doing? Is there anything that can make up for the life that was lost? And further, how do we treat people if we know that they committed a crime in the past? What are we supposed to feel? Nothing Can Hurt You is a great addition to this new subgenre, even if it has few answers to offer readers.

A haunting story told from multiple points of view which, at times, was confusing. Creepy enough to keep me interested.

In this quirky novel by Nicola Maye Goldberg, art student Sara Morgan is murdered by her boyfriend Blake Campbell, who is acquitted of the crime by a plea of temporary insanity. However, like a pebble thrown into a pond, the crime continues to resonate, moving outward in circles from 1997 to present time. The community bears witness through the voices of the woman who finds Sara's body, a young newspaper reporter, the girl Sara babysat, the sheriff, a private detective, Blake's best friend from college, and Sara's half-sister who was only two at the time of the murder. This novel compares favorably to the work of British literary crime writer Kate Atkinson in its eerie cast and multitude of voices. And even as these voices ring true, one still is left with lingering questions. Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for an advance copy of NOTHING CAN HURT YOU.

This is a phenomenal book. It is the story of murder, its impact, and the aftermath, told in a series of vignettes. How does a tragedy, particularly a senseless and violent one, affect those on the periphery of it? Those closest to it? What do they carry? How are they different? What do they think about or fear? How are they changed?

The narratives in this book are a window into the experiences of individuals grappling with grief, anger, fascination, indifference, pity, and sadness. The stories are both profound and overwhelmingly believable, common, at the same time as being horrifying and poignant.

I read this in two sittings. And I will read it again. This is a book I might pick up any time I am having difficulty coping with the bleak and sometimes frightening lived experience of too many women in the world.

Each character in this story feels fully developed and three dimensional, though the vignettes are short. I admire deeply the author’s ability to bring disparate, tender, and raw viewpoints to life.

I received a digital copy of this book from Net Galley, in exchange for an honest review. As soon as I finished the book, I preordered it as well.

A girl murdered by her boyfriend and the ripple effects throughout a community. .The book started out grabbing my attention quickly but the flow was challenging to follow. I noted peoples names throughout and had to reference those notes to keep track of who was who and how they were connected to the story. The concept was interesting, but the flow was a bit jumpy. Issues of gender violence, secrets, the concept of justice are just some of the topics woven throughout the lives of the many people impacted by this murder.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an Advanced Release Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I do like true-crime so my interest was piqued when I realized that it was based on a true story. The book focuses on the story of Sara Morgan. Sara Morgan was a college student who was murdered by her boyfriend, Blake, but questions arise when Blake is found not guilty due to temporary insanity.

Unfortunately, I found this one hard to follow. There is a lot of jumping between past and present and at times feels more like a collection of stories rather than one cohesive one.

A college co-ed is murdered by her boyfriend and dumped in the woods. The boyfriend pleads insanity and is found not guilty. Nothing Can Hurt You, based on a true story, follows how this murder impacted a variety of people.

This book was very difficult to follow as the narrator is constantly changing to another person impacted by the murder. I kept waiting to see how the author was going to connect and tie-in all of the characters, but that revelation never came.

As someone who loves crime stories, especially non-fiction crime stories, I would like to recommend this book to other readers. However, there are so many more well-written books out there in this genre, I would put this one toward the bottom of my list.

Thank you to Net Galley and Bloomsbury Publishing for my advanced copy.

This book is a good suspense novel, and one that keeps the reader engaged from start to finish. Goldberg ably unfolds the plot and one is waiting eagerly to find out where the story will take us. Good read!

" [Doing a bad thing doesn't make you a bad person.] There must be a certain threshold of bad things that did in fact reflect on your character. It's just that no one was really qualified to make that call"

Ugh, another book that suffers from being described and compared to Gone Girl.

Nothing Can Hurt You is not a suspenseful fast paced Thriller. It is an intriguing literary look at what makes us interested in "bad people" and how a crime can ripple through an area and touch all sorts of lives.

The writing is lyrical at parts, but the chapters jump around to different points of view without any lead up and that was confusing.

I enjoyed this story, but it took me awhile to get used to the slow pacing when I was expecting a Thriller.

3

Nothing Can Hurt You follows a wide cast of characters who are at least somewhat connected to the murder of a young student in the late 90's in upstate New York.

I had such high hopes for this novel, but unfortunately I'm left with lackluster feelings. I can't help but feel like the book doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a thriller? Suspense? Meditation on small town life? I believe the story could have benefited from expanding the novel by at least 50 pages or so, or if the author had focused on just a couple characters as opposed to the 5-10 she ultimately follows.

I received an advanced electronic copy from Bloomsbury & NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It is not 100% clear if "Nothing Can Hurt You" is based on the true story . A young college student was murdered by her boyfriend who was later deemed not guilty by reason of insanity and diagnosed with schizophrenia. It's not a mystery because learn who kills her early in the book, but rather a series of essays told from the points of you of 12 people who are impacted by the crime.

The digital download was difficult to follow because chapters were not clearly delineated and it was hard to know when the narrator shifted. The book is clever, but not necessarily gripping or exciting.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was so looking forward to reading this one but found it very disjointed and confusing. The concept sounded so intriguing and knowing it was based on a true event -even better. A college student, Sara, is murdered by her boyfriend, Blake, who has taken acid. He spends a short time in a psychiatric facility and then carries on with his life. Without a doubt the death of a young woman, with so much to look forward to, will affect many others, as I know from personal experience, but the intersections between the characters in this book were very murky and jumped around from character to character so much that I found myself rereading passages frequently to keep track of what was going on. Perhaps it would have been more powerful with fewer characters, with each being more developed. Thank you to Nicola Maye Goldberg, Bloomsbury Hardcover, and NetGalley for affording me the opportunity to read an arc of this book, to be published on June 23.

A beautiful tapestry of voices all connected, in some unique way, to Sara Morgan, a young woman ostensibly killed by her boyfriend. Nicola Maye Goldberg has as some have said reenvisioned the novel in a spectacular fashion. With each new voice, I found myself all the more riveted to their stories and the tangential threads they had to the dead woman. This is literary and page-turning at the same time, not an easy feat. I look forward to seeing what Goldberg comes up with next.

This book is about . . . nothing. It's not a mystery. It's definitely not a thriller. It's not a true crime story. It's not a character study. It is not a social commentary. Frankly, I'm mystified.

In the first chapter -- although my ARC didn't actually have chapter breaks -- a woman goes for a walk in the woods and stumbles across a dead body. The body is that of Sara Morgan, who was killed by her boyfriend, Blake, in 1993 while he was tripping on acid. (He also had other mental issues.) Blake is acquitted by reason of insanity, is sentenced to a stay in a psychiatric hospital, then is released and goes on to live a normal, happy life. Every subsequent chapter is from the POV of individuals who knew Sara or Blake -- a child for whom she babysat, her stepsister, a journalist, an ex-roommate. Each chapter is very short, and none of them tie together. There is no character development because you meet a new character in each chapter and then move on to the next. Most particularly, there is no character development of Sara, who is the central character in the novel.

I'm giving Nothing Can Hurt You two stars because the writing is lovely and because this is a debut novel (I think). Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing. for providing me a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Though this book moves pretty quickly, I often found it confusing. I liked the storyline and found it very interesting, but it felt as if it jumped around; as if before one thought was finished we were jumping to another.

First, my thanks to Netgalley for sharing the ARC in exchange for an honest review. My feelings on this novel are mixed. For, despite having an idea of what I was in for, I still expected it to be more of a mystery (or at least have a mysterious vibe.) It doesn't. Instead, it is simply a collection of voices, some who knew the victim and some who didn't, whose lives are impacted by her death to varying degrees. It's an interesting concept as well as pretty effective. However, perhaps as a result of so many voices, each individual character remained relatively flat and neither meaningful nor empathetic -- including the victim -- which is rather tragic and disconcerting on the part of the reader. I believe I would have enjoyed it more with a few less characters and a deeper glimpse into the life of the murder victim. It would also be a good documentary.

My advice to readers: don't read the blurbs. Don't read the comparisons (It's Gone Girl, it's The Girl on the Train, or whatever). It's not a thriller (we know whodunit). It's not a mystery.

But it IS a great drama. Told in multiple POVs and flashing back to the pasts of both Blake (the murderer) and Sara (the murdered college student), we see how this one incident affected so many people and in so many ways.

While the kindle version I had was a bit confusing (I couldn't always tell who was narrating or if there was a narrator), I allowed it all to flow over me like a stream. Here was one story, there was another. Here was a bit of anger, there a bit of sadness. I kept coming back to read it night after night so it definitely kept my interest. I would also say it wasn't exactly a story (no beginning, middle, end) but I think that circularity worked: life is not a straight line.

Thanks to Netgalley for the arc to review.

Nothing Can Hurt You: Nicola Maye Goldberg
Release date: June 23rd,202o
Publisher: Bloomsbury

Propulsive, jumpy, and grotesque; a haunting debut novel inspired by true events.
Summary:
In 1997, Sara Morgan, student at a liberal arts college in New York, was found dead in the woods outside of campus. Her throat had been slit to her vertebrae by her boyfriend, who then plead guilty under the guise of temporary insanity.
After only getting minor punishments in the grand scheme of things, this case impacts a surprising network of community members. This book weaves together the stories of the young woman who found Sara’s body, the junior reporter who senses a connection to John Logan, the local serial killer, Sara’s half sister, and a kid Sara used to babysit, who now writes John Logan in prison.
This book is definitely a social commentary on how gendered violence is not as much as an anomaly as society would like to think it is. Nicola Maye Goldberg does attempt to paint a holistic view of who and how people were impacted by her murder.
My thoughts:
So. It is a very fast read. However, I was hoping for the plot twist/climax that never came. I actually found this book to be a bit confusing and most of all frustrating, but there really was some major enticement because I finished the book in one day. I think the problem was how quickly Goldberg rotated the characters, I was struggling to make sense of it all. Seems like the multiple POV was a grear idea and how the plot progressed, but could have been executed more seamlessly. Also, I really had an issue with the ending. The ending kinda just happened, like all the sudden you were to run into a door. And I had kept reading because I figured some giant climatic element would come to play to wrap everything up neatly in a bow at the end, I had high expectations, and when it didn’t, I was let down even further.
Regardless of the flaws I did find with this novel, I found it a very entertaining, quick read. One that had ton of potential.
Along with posting on Net Galley, I will be posting my review to Goodreads, Amazon (when it becomes available), my Instagram (which has over a two thousand book review followers) and my blog. Please find the link to my blog post below. I am very grateful for the opportunity to review such a raw and gritty thriller. All opinions and thoughts are my own. Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Chanel Johnson, If You Can Read This

Link to Blog Post: https://ifyoucanreadthisdotblog.wordpress.com
Link to Instagram Post: https://www.instagram.com/ifyoucan_read_this/
Link to Goodreads Post: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/112342382-chanel-johnson