From the very first sentence, I was sucked in by this captivating story. Liz's best yet, it's bound to be a huge hit. Dark and creepy ... normally I hate (in a good way), the main characters in Liz's books, but I've a real soft spot for Sally.

A suprisingly sinister psychological thriller. Despite how it starts with a bang, it also develops in a way that was much more disturbing than I expected. I was a little nervous at the beginning with where they were going with Sally. But I ended up so invented in her and where it was all leading. Compelling, unexpectedly upbeat at times and incredibly grim at others.

There's also a whole other side to the story happening that I don't want to spoil. But it's tumultuous, traumatic, and something that I'm left thinking about.

The warnings are real with this one, please be sure to seek them out in advance of reading.

Liz Nugent is back with a bang. It has been a little while since Liz has released a new book but fans appetites are sure to be more than satisfied with what she is serving up this time.

In the past many people have noted that Liz's protagonists are, to put it mildly, less than likeable. This time, however, the star of the show should be easy to warm to. Sally has always shied away from public life and holed up with her father - but events at the start of the book mean she has to come out of her shell a little, and start to get to know not only those around her a bit better, but also herself.

As is usual for a Liz Nugent novel the opening lines will hook you in right from the off. Liz has weaved a fantastic story that I highly recommend you read - but, and I do say this a lot for this kind of book, try not to find out too much about it before you go in. Just pick it up and get reading.

Sally Diamond is a 40 year old recluse who lives with her widowed adoptive father in Roscommon in Ireland. Her father jokes that when he dies, Sally should "put him out with the rubbish". So she takes him literally and does just that. This action of course makes Sally the centre of attention with the police, the media and the local community, which for Sally, is not ideal.

After her father's death and Sally's sudden media attention, she receives messages from Australia from someone who appears to know her from childhood. Sally has no memories of your childhood before she was adopted. These messages set Sally on a journey of discovery into her childhood that she has no memories of herself. However this journey is far from sunshine and roses. It is tinged with fear, anxiety trepidation and a reluctance to acknowledge the truth about her past.

Liz Nugent has given us a tense, edge of your seat, page turning psychological thriller to get lost in.
Read it. You won't regret it.

A pacy page turner!

Sally Diamond is a loveable oddball with a strange past - and it turns out she didn’t know the half of it. Diamond gains notoriety for a troubling mistake, and with this unwanted attention, she makes discovery about her life, her past and herself.

This was a fun read with a lot of warmth - quite a feat given the nature content covered. I expect Strange Sally Diamond will be a very popular mystery novel this year.

Pick up this book if: you wished that Eleanor Oliphant was completely twisted

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I only finished this because I wanted to see where it was going, but let me spare your the misery.
It’s going nowhere.
The story felt as clinical as reading a newspaper article. It was dark, twisted and pointless. Even the characters you were supposed to sympathise with were portrayed as weak and disgusting.
Both of the main characters are unlikable and irredeemable with no character growth whatsoever. Their narratives are both devoid of any feelings, they just present facts on a timeline.
The ending was awful, nothing was ever truly resolved, information just went in from one ear and went straight out from the other.
And what was even the point? To tell that people never change?
Well thanks for wasting my time then but I refuse to take any book at face value because it has a bunch of "different" people.

Thank you NetGalley & Penguin General UK for the digital ARC

Really enjoyed this - like all previous books by this author. Well written this follows the journey for Sally the main character- when she loses her father and discovers amd deals with her traumatic past ( having blocked it out)

I enjoyed this read. It's dark as per Liz's previous books. Good story, unusual. I flew through this read. The ending bummed me out though...

Liz Nugent is really very good. This book is like Eleanor Oliphant but with guts - and teeth. I loved Sally’s voice and her story arc was satisfying, if not pleasing. I think that’s the point. Nugent shows us human nature in its raw form. My only criticism is that the number of characters, especially the number of middle aged women, had me confused at times. But, frankly, I didn’t mind because the story, writing and main character were so good.

Fantastic book, I finished it in two days (shame about work and sleep, I could not put it down!). Wonderfully crafted plot and amazing characters, highly recommended.

Wow, Liz Nugent never misses. Strange Sally Diamond is a tornado from the get-go - Sally, a reclusive and awkward woman, lives with her dad in rural Roscommon. When her dad dies, she decides the most logical thing to do is to burn his body with their other rubbish, and pretty soon Sally's name is all over the headlines. But Sally has a bleak past that she never knew, and now that past is rearing it's head again...

Sally Diamond is a character who will stay with me for a long time, and it's a testament to the author that such a vivid character exists within such a tightly plotted and twisty novel. Sally has been kept from the world, and as such, her way of thinking and speaking is wildly diffferent to what we expect, which is evident not just from the horrific act of burning her dad's body, but also from the way she processes the world. Making Sally a POV character was a risky choice but it's one Nugent pulls off, seemingly effortlessly, allowing us to emotionally connect with Sally by seeing the world through her eyes.

SSD is a book that it's best to go into completely blind and embrace the absolutely wild reading experience. Liz Nugent is a writer I trust implictly to take me to places I don't expect, and that was 100% the case with this one. But I think my favourite thing about Nugent is that she's more than just an excellent thriller writer - this novel is also about trauma, fear and learning to live in a world that you don't fit into. There are parts that are oddly hopeful, and parts that will devastate you entirely. The range of emotions I felt reading this book is testament to Nugent's power as a writer.

I have been in a reading funk now for months. Occassionally I've come across a book that has gripped me from the first page and that is what has happened here.

I've read everything Liz Nugent has written and they have all been five star reads for me. The only thing I can add is that her books just get better and better. She is an incredible writer. This book is so easy to read, yet conveys the brutality and shocking storyline succinctly and with compassion. It is a story that stayed with me through every page, compelling me to put off other things in order to read more of the story.

I wont give away the storyline as I went into it blind and absolutely loved it. Bravo Liz Nugent, you've done it again👏👏👏

I'm big Liz Nugent fan and the premise of this novel seemed highly intriguing. The quality of the writing is as gripping and taut as ever - I read this in two sittings.

A harrowing read at times - in much the same way Room, by Emma Donaghue was - it was an interesting way of understanding the impact that such an experience can have on a young child - and the concepts of nature vs nurture when it comes to siblings raised in simillar but different ways.

However, I was really disappointed, to see how the particular character traits of Steve and Mary were linked to them possibly being neurodivergent. As someone who is neurodivergent, whose husband and children also are, it's getting really exhausting to constantly see our behaviours portrayed in this way - that we are uncaring, violent, weirdos, incapable of relating to others in any meaningful way or maintain successful relationships and careers.

I think this book would benefit from any references to neurodiversity being removed.

**EDIT The publisher contacted me and removed the reference to neurodiversity from this book, which I appreciate so much. I have moved my rating up accordingly to 5*

Liz Nugent is one of my favourite writers. Each time she produces a novel it is different from the last and Strange Sally Diamond is one of a kind. At first, I wasn't sure about it but once halfway through I raced to the end, staying up late into the night to finish it. As usual, Liz excels in writing about a flawed main character: Sally, in this case, has been raised with little socialisation and when her father dies she takes him at his word and 'leaves him out with the bins'. Her life then attracts unwanted attention and the twists and turns that happen do not disappoint. Many thanks to PenguinGeneralUK/Sandycove for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book grabbed me from the very first sentence and when a book does that, you just know it's going to be a good'un. A masterpiece in characterisation and another 5 ***** read as brilliant and gripping as all of her previous books. I urge you to read it.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

@currentlyreading__
Book 89 of 2022

Thank you to @NetGalley, @VikingBooksUK and of course the very talented author @liznugentwriter for the ARC of ‘Strange Sally Diamond’ ahead of publication on 2nd March 2023.

When I saw fellow Liver Bird @books.on.the.moon had gotten an ARC, we decided to Buddy Read and we both fell in love with the tale of Sally Diamond. 💎

I have never read anything by Nugent before but after this, I have all of her books earmarked to buy with my Christmas Amazon vouchers!

Sally is in her forties living an isolated life in rural Roscommon. When her father dies she remembers what he has told her to do, throw him in the rubbish. This is exactly what Sally does and as a result, finds herself centre of attention with others disgusted by her heinous behaviour.

Having to adapt to life without her father, Sally stops acting as though she’s deaf and interacts with those in the community who were initially fearful of Sally’s behaviour. Then come the letters and a teddy bear Sally recognises. Her psychologist father’s manuscripts and tapes reveal that Sally’s life as she knew it, was a lie. She was the subject of horrific abuse and this is not only shocking, there are multiple twists and turns as well as flashbacks to the past with a whole cast of characters spanning decades.

Not wanting to spoil this, I will say that it is my favourite read of 2022 and it is going to be huge. I was totally invested in not only the beauty of Nugent’s writing, but just how much of a character-driven novel this is; with Sally painted beautifully and the experiences written about with brutal complexity adding layers and depths to plot and character.

Get this on your pre-order list. If my review isn’t reason enough, just read what brilliant authors like Lisa Jewell, Marian Keyes and Shari Lapena have to say. Now, when is the TV adaptation?!

#bookstagram #bibliophile #bookworm #book #booknerd #bookstagrammer #kindle #instabook #reader #bookobsessed #instareads #currentlyreading #bookchat #bookish #books #readersofinstagram #netgalley#liznugent #strangesallydiamond

TW: kidnapping, abduction, imprisonment, violence, sexual assault, physical abuse, mental abuse, death, coercion, manipulation, paedophilia.

This is my first book by Liz Nugent so I had no preconceptions as to what to expect from her writing, and I quite liked going in blind. But now I’ve read one, you can be sure I’ll be reading all of her work. She has managed, through one book alone, to become a top author for me.

It is a pure psychological thriller, not just for the reader, but for those in the book too. The main character, the supporting characters, the background characters…everyone is on this journey, whether for good or for bad. It hits you straight out of the gates. Liz hasn’t hung about, you’re thrown into the action almost immediately and she doesn’t let up for one moment.

I absolutely loved the interlinking stories. I think it’s very difficult to create a story using two points of view and two time periods and make it easy to read, but she’s perfected that. We have the main story of Sally Diamond herself, but then e have a second story from a Peter. It takes a while for us to know how his story links (I won’t spoil it), but Liz has managed to keep them separate entities but superbly linked. It flows so well that you never feel shortchanged, but she’s leaving a little for you to work out yourself.

I really liked Sally. Her quirks and her difficulties shout of a neurodiverse personality or condition - such as autism; this is explained in further detail, but again, I won’t spoil it here. A lot of fictional books put neurodiverse characters into two camps: they’re either there to be the entertainment or the bullied characters, or they’re ignored. Liz has handled Sally with great sensitivity and she is as important a main character as any non-neurodiverse one. Regardless of what she may or may not have done, or may or may not have said, or what she’s been through, she is this instantly likeable person whose heart is definitely in the right place.

Yes, it is a dark book (see themes above). There’s no getting away from that. It’s unsavoury, there are things people do and say that make you uncomfortable. It borders the gratuitous but for me, I think she’s got it right. It is full on and some of it is hard to stomach, but it is completely in keeping with the theme of the book. She provides enough detail to make the scene understandable, but leaves enough for you to develop in your head.

Given it’s dark storyline and topics, I did find some of it quite numerous. It’s not a comic book, but there’s this sense of dark humour running through it that somehow just worked. It also has elements of a murdery mystery about it. The twists and turns, the unanswered questions, the hidden answers, the…well…mystery. It’s fabulously done.

It is compelling, gripping, exciting, exhilarating, dark, troubling, happy, sad, twisted, dark, endearing, obsessive, funny, scary, enlightening, empowering — but overall, I would say it’s very moving and touching. Sally Diamond is a Diamond. She has her troubles but she’s a shining star, and her story really touched me and she’s instantly become a favourite character of mine.

I know it’s not very ‘literary’ to say but it is good. Very good. Extremely good. That’s the main way of describing it. Yes there’s more detail to go into, which I hope I have in this review, but when all is said and done, this is a very good book.

Liz Nugent is back with a bang with Strange Sally Diamond. Full of the deeply dark and twisted characters that she does so well. A must read for 2023

Full review to come.

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

Publication date: 2 March 2023 (Sandycove)

‘Sally Diamond cannot understand why what she did was so strange.
She was only doing what her father told her to do, to put him out with the rubbish when he died.’

As a long time fan of Liz Nugent, I was thrilled to get an advanced proof copy of her long awaited (by me at least) new book from @penguinbooksireland

Liz Nugent is the queen of opening lines / scenes and Strange Sally Diamond opens with Sally taking her father’s advice quite literally, by putting him out with the rubbish when he dies.

As the news spreads, an investigation ensues (with a thrilling Easter egg for Irish Crime Fiction fans!) and opens up a big can of worms. Not literally, thankfully.

What follows is a charming and quirky page turner, that has been compared to Eleanor Oliphant crossed with Room. I really enjoyed both, so consider that high praise, and would add that Strange Sally Diamond is reminiscent of Liz Nugent’s earlier books, such as Unravelling Oliver.

My only issue with this book is that I’ve read it now so will have to wait a bit longer for the next Liz Nugent.

In the meantime I might have to read it again and would recommend it for fans of psychological thrillers. Available to pre-order now, in al the usual places.

Thanks to the publishers @penguinbooksireland for the advanced proof copy and e-ARC via @netgalley

#StrangeSallyDiamond #LizNugent #IrishAuthors #PsychologicalThriller #IrishBookstagram #2023releases #TiredMammy30minutes #TiredMammyBookClub

Having never read this author before the title of the book caught my attention and I was definitely not disappointed. A wonderful read with wonderful characters, this book will definitely stay with me and has quickly turned into one of my best reads of the year.