Strange Sally Diamond (25 in 2025 #20)

Author: Liz Nugent
Title: Strange Sally Diamond Publisher: Sandycove Date Published: 03/02/2023

Read Dates: 10/05/2025- 10/XX/20206 Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Strange Sally Diamond is a dual POV thriller that follows Sally Diamond in the present day and a second character from childhood until their timeline intersects with Sally as an adult. Sally has always been strange: emotionally detached, socially awkward and literal minded. Her adoptive faher often joked that when he passed she should put him out with the garbage, and when he dies, the literal-minded Sally does just that, drawing a lot of horrified attention and opening the floodgates to details of her life as a small child prior to adoption.

This one was so well written and fun to read, and hard to summarize without spoilers! I loved the chapters from Sally's POV and enjoyed her interactions with others as she tries to learn to navigate life on her own. The secondary POV chapters were definitely interesting, but ultimately left me very frustrated. The ending was disappointing- it was very good and had some twists, but I was wanting a different resolution I suppose.

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 worried police, but also a sinister voice from a past she has no memory of. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, recluse Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, finding independence, and learning that people don't always mean what they say.

But when messages start arriving from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she knows herself, Sally's life will be thrown into chaos once again . . .