Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent – Inkish Kingdoms

Strange Sally Diamond; a crazy, addictive, and terrifying read that might have just enough wit to kick you off the scent of the nonexistent twist.

Through an alternated point of view of two characters and two different timelines, Liz Nugent concocted her novel with a well-paced narrative that depicts humanity’s cruelty and paints a vivid image of what isolation, violence, and the effects of untreated trauma can do to the fragile mind of children and adults.

Strange Sally Diamond Summary:

Sally Diamond is too different, and nobody but her parents seems to understand her. She has a lovely father; her mother died a few years ago, she had no siblings or friends, and pretends to be mute to avoid interacting with people and lacks social skills that make her too literal for her own good. Everything changes one day when her father dies, and she cremates his body in the trash incinerator they have in their backyard because her father said so, and here is where things take a dark turn, and every little secret of Sally’s past, parents, and personality is revealed, leaving her perplexed and forced to face change.

Strange Sally Diamond Review

I have always considered that a good mystery and thriller is defined by the power of the plot twist and whether you see it coming or not. When a novel has the ability to distract you and connect the stories in ways never imagined before… you have a good thriller. Sadly, this is not the case for Strange Sally Diamond. Although Liz Nugent threw at us a red herring – thank god, if not the novel would have been too obvious – the story lacked that je-ne-sais-quoi-plot twist, but that does not mean that the plot didn’t thicken and left me impressed and deeply disturbed.

The pace was fast and let you know about Sally Diamond’s past and upbringing just in time to avoid making the novel dull. Masterfully, Nugent allow us to get closer to the characters and understand the personal struggles and traits of the many individuals that give nuance to the novel’s psychological undertones. As the novel comes to, what we though, the climax through happiness, resolution and blissfulness, the author then hit us with a locomotive of a brand new trauma and perspectives of the horrendous human nature, not only snatching us from victory but throwing us to the violent repetition of human mistakes and lies.

Weaving fiction with reality, the novel rushes into a series of unfortunate events unique to those who experience tragic circumstances. It leads not only us, but also the main characters, to an open ending that emphasizes the cruel reality of loose ends and unresolved traumas, which tend to relapse into psychological coping mechanisms for survival.

Strange Sally Diamond is a novel that chilled my blood and did not required monsters or the supernatural, but the blunt reality that humans, to not say men, are the most terrifying monsters we should be aware of, because would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man?