An Agent Reviews STRANGE SALLY DIAMOND by Liz Nugent

If you’ve been following my reviews for a while, you know that I am constantly on the hunt for a voice that truly breaks the mold. In a thriller market that can often feel saturated with the same “domestic suspense” archetypes, Sally Diamond is a total unicorn.

The story kicks off with a hook that is as morbid as it is fascinating: when Sally’s father dies, she follows his instructions to “put him out with the trash” quite literally. It’s this startling lack of social awareness that thrusts Sally into a media firestorm, unearthing a past far darker than even she realized.

As an agent, what immediately grabbed me wasn’t just the shock factor of that opening, but the way Liz Nugent leans into an “unreliable-but-not-malicious” narrator. Sally is neurodivergent-coded, and her literal interpretation of a world she doesn’t quite understand provides a chilling, often darkly humorous lens through which we view her trauma.

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From a craft perspective, this book is a masterclass in how to maintain momentum through character revelation rather than just external plot twists. While many thrillers rely on a frantic series of “and then this happened” beats, Nugent builds the tension by peeling back the layers of Sally’s history with surgical precision.

Market-wise, this is the kind of book that straddles lanes beautifully. It has the accessibility and hook of commercial suspense, but its psychological depth and thematic weight push it into upmarket territory. If you’re drawn to character-driven thrillers where identity and trauma unravel layer by layer, this will absolutely be your thing.

What lingers after the final page isn’t the initial shock. It’s the ache. The uncomfortable empathy. The realization that strangeness is often just isolation reframed.

It’s unsettling. It’s sharp. And it’s the kind of singular character study that reminds me why I keep hunting for books that don’t feel like anything else on the shelf.

—Vicky