The Reading Bud

Book Details:

Author: Liz Nugent
Release Date: 28 March 2024
Series:
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Crime Fiction
Format: E-book
Pages: 384
Publisher: Penguin
Blurb:
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.
Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and police detectives, but also a sinister voice from a past she cannot remember.

Review

The book began with the most insane inciting incident I’ve ever read in a crime novel. The incident itself was obviously shocking, but what took it to an entirely new level was how the author set it up! Sally Diamond is indeed a strange person when we encounter her at the start of the book. Over the course of the story, her progress is remarkable, and the author managed to pull me in to such an extent that I did not even care that there was no active crime for most of the story. Wow… I’ve never seen such an effortless unravelling of an intensely complicated past. It shows just how brilliant the writing was.

Then came the horrendous revelations about Sally’s past, and the way she processed them felt so realistic that I was scared I might find myself pulling out my own hair by the end of the book (thankfully, I did not). When Sally developed friendships, I found myself rooting for her in a way I hadn’t rooted for any character since Eddard Stark’s death, when I read the book back in 2012. I always crave and long for an incredibly intense connection with the protagonist, and this book delivered in spades!

This book is a bewildering study of extensively traumatised people. It explores not only the psychopath and his background, along with what becomes of his victims, but also the deepest recesses of the minds of children born out of such abusive relationships. Sally was a hard, cold, brittle person who made great progress with the help of therapy, although, obviously, the damage could only be contained to a certain extent. In Peter, we saw how manipulative abuse really works and how it shapes a person’s psyche until they become exactly like their abuser, all the while believing they are nothing like them. That was truly terrifying!

Then we have the victim who forgets all about her abduction and voluntarily goes on to spend her short life with her abuser’s son, whom she sees as a kind of rescuer, even though, in reality, he wasn’t much better than his father—perhaps a little more lenient, but an abuser nonetheless. And most heartbreaking of all was that Sally, who trusted no one, made such amazing progress in therapy and learnt to trust others, only to discover that she really could not trust anyone in this world, because people hurt you.

Wow, this book is a masterclass for anyone who wants to write dark, psychological characters. Kudos to the amazing storytelling.

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