One of my favourite books of 2023 already. Delighted to include it in the July edition of Novel Encounters, my regular column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer, Canada’s national culture magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

This was a trip - I absolutely loved the main character and wanted to protect her at all costs immediately. This story is not for the faint of heart, there are a lot of hard subjects explored here (it gets dark yo) but if you're willing to take the twisty journey I promise you won't be disappointed.
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I honestly can't say much without spoiling so I'll drop the synopsis below instead. Regardless, it was a solid 4 star read for me

Thank you Net Galley for ARC of Strange Sally Diamond
This definitely was strange. I did have a little difficulty keeping track of the secondary characters in Sally’s current life. I found the writing very simple, and the storylines disturbing, but I was intrigued, and wanted to know the outcome. I am not sure that I should have bothered. A cross between The Room and Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine. Sally did have her moments. Blunt, funny and unfiltered.

Strange Sally Diamond is another compelling and intriguing read by Liz Nugent.

The book is shocking and unforgettable and oddly enough not only heart breaking but you hear touching.

Sally is an oddity there is no doubt. Her story is a horrific one and yet she makes you laugh.

Strange Sally Diamond will no doubt be a Book Club choice and it certainly will be the talk of the summer.

Its a journey the reader must take on their own to get the full effect of the story and all the characters.

My review does not do the book jusitice,

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada, Simon & Schuster for an unforgettable read.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada and NetGalley for an advance e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

Sally Diamond is a quirky, eccentric character with little to no social skills due to her upbringing.
This is a story of heartbreak, growth and empowerment sure to leave you wanting more. I loved everything about this story, Sally's tenacity and her strife to better herself was a joy to read. Sally had to overcome a tragic past and learn how to live and interact with family and the new friends she has made.

Everyone that picks up this read is sure to love it.

This book was a refreshing change from the usual serial killer books
Sally was adopted into a family when she was approximately5 to 6 years old.
She really doesn't know much about her childhood before that, or she just doesn't remember.
Sally has always been an odd duck, keeping mainly to herself as she lacks confidence.
.When Sally's adoptive father passes away, he has told her that she is just to throw him out. She tries to burn his body herself to cremate him. Odd behavior, to say the least, but she really doesn't know any better. When she starts going through her father's papers, with the help of a family friend, she starts to unravel her sorted past. The more she learns, the more she realizes that she needs help to understand what exactly happened to her birth mother. Who was her father? Where is he now? Will he come after her?
Sally makes some friends and come to grips with her past with the help of a friends she learns the truth.
This is a very dark read. Sally was a victim, as was her biological mother. I really loved this book.
Many more victims will surface, and surprises along the way. I really loved this book. I give it a 4.5 out of 5.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: July 18, 2023
A neurodivergent protagonist. A woman who gives birth in captivity. A dark, twisted misogynistic pedophile who manages to live an unassuming life with his son. Is there anything that this book doesn’t have? “Strange Sally Diamond” by Liz Nugent has absolutely everything I look for in a great read, and I was instantly hooked.
Sally Diamond has lived in relative isolation her whole life, living with only her father for company after the death of her mother when Sally was a teenager. But after Sally’s father passes away, she is forced to face the world without his support. Awkward and untrusting around people, Sally keeps her interactions with her community to a minimum. Due to the mysterious circumstances of her father’s death, Sally’s isolation is invaded and deep dark secrets from her past are revealed, secrets Sally herself wasn’t aware of. Like her real name, her birth parents and most especially, her childhood before the age of seven. When Sally starts receiving strange messages and gifts from an unknown sender, she has to reach out to the people she previously avoided, in order to find out who she is and where she came from, all while trying to fit into a world where she so clearly stands out.
Every one of Nugent’s stories has been a five-star for me, but I think this one tops the list. Sally is unstoppable, brave and completely honest, even though her childhood trauma should make her anything but. Faced with criticisms and judgment her entire life, she is confident in who she is, which helps build an immediate rapport and sense of empathy with the reader. The tense, non-stop plot is full of twists and turns, and right from the first page, there was no slowing down.
“Diamond” is a creative combination of “Room” and “The Maid”, with Nugent magic thrown in. The unguessable ending was just the cherry on the top and, in case there is any remaining doubt, I will be lining up for Nugent’s next read.

Sally Diamond and her father, a retired psychiatrist, live a quiet and secluded life in Ireland. Sally is so socially awkward, she pretends to be deaf when running errands in town. She also takes things quite literally and complies with her dying father's request to be thrown out with the trash after he passes away. This action brings the police and media to her doorstep and her whole life changes when she starts to learn about her biological parents.
I'm giving this book a five-star review because I could not put it down. I was drawn to the characters, especially Sally, and although the story got very dark at times, I couldn't stop rooting for a somewhat happy outcome. Fortunately, the story also had humor, hope, and a cast of strong and compelling characters.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this novel.

This was an intriguing read about a neurodivergent woman with a mysterious and devastating childhood.

For the most part of really enjoyed the story, especially the dual POVs however the ending was odd. It felt like it just ended with a very open ended conclusion. It also felt a tiny bit rushed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Canada for an advanced digital copy of this book. All opinions in this review are my own. Solid 4 stars!

Irish crime novelist Liz Nugent is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors. Of the previous books of hers that I have read, all of them have been outstanding. Unraveling Oliver was an enthralling read with a twist ending, and Lying in Wait was even more diabolical with its devastating conclusion, too. Now comes Nugent’s latest work, Strange Sally Diamond, and it is a delicious read indeed. Like its predecessors, it has an ending of sorts that you might not see coming. And it’s obvious from reading all these books that Nugent is an author of considerable skill — plus, she has the hardware to back it up. She has won four Irish Book Awards and the James Joyce Medal for Literature. With that knowledge in hand, you can say that Nugent is an author who can transcend the genre she’s working in. She’s not a particularly literary writer, but her work is solid and, what’s more, entertaining. It may also make you feel a tad bit uncomfortable, as she can write effective thrillers where life isn’t always fair to their main characters. Indeed, Nugent’s real talent lies in the fact that she knows how to write compelling and complex characters who may not have anyone’s best interests at heart. That’s what makes Nugent so special — she can twist the screws rather well when she needs to.

I don’t think I’m giving away much detail in this paragraph where I summarize the book because Strange Sally Diamond is upfront early on about various aspects of its plot. (However, if you want to be surprised by this book, you can jump down a paragraph.) This novel may be a less crime-oriented book on the surface than past efforts of the author’s and is less of a whodunnit and more of a whydunnuit. (This is also not an original thought: others on the Interwebs have said the same thing.) It’s also more of a slow burn of a read. It takes its time to get going, but once it does (about midway through), you won’t be able to put this story down. It concerns the titular character, who, when we’re introduced to her, has thrown her recently deceased adopted dad’s remains into an incinerator behind her house because she has mistaken his instructions on how he would like to be buried. The result of this causes a bit of a media uproar in Ireland, where the book is largely set, and it turns out there might be a reason for Sally’s weirdness that seems to border as being somewhere on the autism spectrum at first blush. It turns out that Sally is so unusual because she has buried trauma issues: her real birth mother was kidnapped as an 11-year-old and tied to a chain inside a barn or shed behind a pedophile’s house. Sally (born with the name Mary) came into existence when her birth mother was around 18 years old and lived with her in that barn for seven years — a time of which she remembers absolutely nothing. The book then recounts Sally’s attempts to reintegrate into society since both of her adopted parents are now dead and she must make it through life on her own — which is difficult because her adopted father sheltered her. Meanwhile, Sally is getting strange gifts in the mail from New Zealand and a man she has recently met has become infatuated with her and her case. Is any of this (the gifts and her new friend’s obsession) connected to Sally’s horrible and deplorable upbringing?

The interesting thing about this novel is that it shares common ground with another book by a female author with partial Irish heritage: Emma Donoghue and her book Room. Strange Sally Diamond may be a bit off-putting because of that — not because the subject matter is so repulsive, but because this ground has been covered elsewhere before. However, there are some zingers in terms of plot twists happening here, and that’s its main selling point because of its carbon copy cloning of a previous novel. However, if you’ve read Room (and I hope I’m not spoiling anything here), only half of that book is spent in captivity. This book lingers on it a bit longer, since it is also partially narrated by Sally’s brother, Peter, who was born not long after Sally’s/Mary’s birth mother was abducted. Peter is close to Sally’s/Mary’s biological father who is also very misogynistic in addition to being a child kidnapper and rapist. So we see the world through Peter’s eyes, and that worldview is pretty warped as he is led to believe that he has a skin condition that prevents him from getting close to others and has also learned that women are not to be trusted by his father. In a sense, Strange Sally Diamond is a character study of what makes certain men turn out to be so rotten, in so much as it is a novel about what happens to someone who has experienced violence as a child.

This is a rip-roaring great read once things begin to pick up and the chapters end on cliffhangers. My only complaint about the book is that it has multiple endings — it would have been fine to just end on one character’s story because it is so repugnant (it would have made a great shock final ending) rather than pile on a couple of other endings to tie up loose ends and redeem certain characters. Well, I guess I have two complaints: the book does take its time to become an exciting, thrill ride of a read. It marinades in Sally’s uniqueness, but once Sally begins to change, the reader begins to identify with her and root for her to pull through all the weirdness that is being thrown her way. Despite those complaints, this is still a more than worthwhile read. This is a commanding character study of people who do bad things — sometimes because they were just born that way, and sometimes because life experiences have molded them a certain way. At the end of the day, Strange Sally Diamond is a good book and another feather in Liz Nugent’s cap. World, I want to introduce to you one of my newest favourite writers, because this novel proves that its author is worthy of a lot of accolades for writing things that deviate from the normal thriller “thrill rides.” Strange Sally Diamond surely is a treat and proves that anything Nugent touches is mostly gold.

I love Sally Diamond. I want to give her a big smile, not a hug because she would hate that. This book had everything I could have wanted. It ripped your heart out, scared you, made you nervous and was frustrating in the best way. It's difficult to write much about this book without giving away spoilers, but learning about Sally's complex and tragic past along with her was a great journry that never got boring. Some of the twists were obvious, but others you didn't see coming. The end was so impactful and haunting. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

I didn’t want this one to end!

This is my first book by Liz Nugent but it will not be my last. I was so engrossed in the story that I missed everything going on around me. When I was at school pickup, cars parked all around me and I never noticed.

Sally Diamond doesn’t remember anything before she turned seven. She feels social anxiety and isolates herself from others. When her father dies and she follows his verbal instructions on what to do with his body to a T, she doesn’t understand the attention. Then media come around and everyone wants to talk to her and they keep calling her Mary. Then a teddy bear arrives in the mail from someone who goes by S and Sally recognizes it immediately. Questions about Sally’s past before she was adopted at age 7 come to light and neuro-atypical Sally struggles to process everything.

Told in alternating POVs between Sally at age 43 and a young boy named Peter who we see grow up, Strange Sally Diamond is a satisfying page-turner that I would highly recommend.

Nugent has written in depth characters and evokes an emotional response to many of them. As the story unfolds, I was captivated by the breadcrumbs dropped along the way.

In addition to the suspenseful pacing, the story questions one’s nature and if nurture truly is enough to change a life.

For fans of Room by Emma Donoghue and Alice Sebold’s The Lucky Bones, Strange Sally Diamond is going to be a summer smash when it hits shelves July 18, 2023. Many thanks to @simonschusterca and @netgalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinions. Pick this one up!

Well, this book certainly isn’t one ‘to be put out with the bins.”

WHAT DID I JUST READ?! I mulled this question in my head for days before I put pen and paper together to review this book.

In short: It’s a book about a very unusual young lady, Sally, who is uncovering her horrific past after her father dies.

It’s no secret that Strange Sally Diamond is the appeal of this book; she’s eccentric and strange. Fascinating, even. I couldn’t help but connect her behaviour to her horrifying childhood as the author doled out crumbs from Sally’s past. I also noted the irony in her belief that “if you tell the truth nothing bad can happen to you.”

Peter is also an interesting character and a product of his upbringing, too. As I finished the book, I couldn’t help but ask: nature or nurture?

This is a dark, emotionally-draining book. It’s written so well that I was convinced it was a true story! I kept Googling it, unconvinced that it wasn’t based on truth. Nugent has written a powerful story that asks us to consider if there’s a possibility that the truth can ever be too catastrophic that healing is impossible. While I struggled in some places, my desperate hope that Sally would ‘end up ok’ on her own, sustained me.

I won’t forget Strange Sally Diamond any time soon.

You need to source this now. Avail yourself of the triggers.

I was gifted this copy by Simon & Schuster Canada and NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.

💥 Monday M A S T E R P I E C E 💥 featuring “Strange Sally Diamond” by Liz Nugent 🫶

BOOK REVIEW: 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤/5

This is the first time in a LONG time that a book has left me completely SHOOK 🤯!! It has taken me a couple of days to compile my thoughts on this book … and wow let’s talk about a book hangover 🤯

“Strange Sally Diamond” is beautifully written and completely mesmerizing. Although it was very hard at times to read, I was totally invested in Sally’s life story. There are numerous trigger warnings in this book that can be A LOT, so please be aware of that.

Sally’s story is told between the past and present. She is a survivor of acts so vile and disturbing from her childhood that you piece together throughout. You come to understand how all of her past trauma directly affects the rest of her life up to adulthood.

Sally has been kept isolated for so many years in different ways that she has not developed proper social skills, has no empathy and does not know how to manage her anger and frustration. She does not have a filter when she does converse with others and is a purist for following routines and sticking to only what she knows.

If you enjoyed other tough reads like The Lovely Bones or Room, then definitely check this one out. This book is dark, disturbing, chilling and HAUNTING to its core … BUT at the same time is emotional, quirky, raw, vulnerable, and at some times also humorous!

Thank you kindly to @liznugentwriter @scoutpressbooks @simonschusterca @netgalley for my advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review. This book releases on July 18, 2023!

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

* Thank you to @netgalley and @simon for providing a digital copy of Strange Sally Diamond in exchange of a honest review.

Ok so this one was right up my alley. It was thrilling, I couldn't wait to know what happened in all these people's lives.. Every single caracters was fascinating.

#bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booklover #booknerd #bookcommunity #canadianbookstagrammer

I really enjoyed Sally Diamond's story even though it was strange, dark and heartbreaking. It was also light and funny at times.

I loved how Sally changed throughout the book and recognized her challenges. Her internal dialogue was really fun at times. She was able to recognize her differences and make light of them. I really loved how blunt and matter of fact she was and how she was accepted as is by so many in the community.

Getting her backstory was shocking but it certainly explained why she is the way she is. As other reviewers have mentioned there's a real Eleanor Oliphant vibe which I really liked.

Very dark book. Parts of the plot can be triggers for some people.
I could not feel any empathy for the main characters. Both felt flat, showed no growth, are insanely naive, and stayed true to their real self.
The end felt rushed in my opinion.

Liz Nugent's Strange Sally Diamond surprised me. I thought I was getting a straight thriller: Forty-three-year-old Sally has spent a life away from others. She struggles with emotional, sensory and social issues and has lived with her father all her life. When he dies, Sally unearths many secrets about her past - horrible things that she has no memory of. Someone remembers though because she is getting strange packages in the mail.

See... a straight thriller and a really compelling thriller too.

But this book is also about Sally's rocky transition into life, her immense struggles, trauma counselling, burgeoning friendships, and her sheer doggedness and determination. I grew to love her and I loved the village she lived in too. I was totally invested in her story.

This book was interesting but in some parts I did find it a bit dry. I liked the alternating points of views and was intrigued enough to finish the book in a timely manner.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC of Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent, published by Simon & Schuster Canada
This book did not disappoint, so well written, characters are intriguing, well described, the author makes you feel like you are right there watching along. I like the narrative and how the author takes us from present to past knce the present story line has been laid.
Sally is just how the title describes, she is strange. She lives with her father until his death, and then lives on her own. She has kept herself sheltered, but gradually makes connections with people close to her. And then some family members she was not aware of start to be part of her life
Great novel and I will be looking for more books from this author