I really enjoyed this book. The ending was very bleak but that was obviously the point (and a story wrapping in 2020 had little hope otherwise.) I hated seeing Sally’s progress deteriorate as we had watched her grow. Great story.

The story opens with strange Sally Diamond disposing of her deceased father's remains in their home trash incinerator. Sally has some issues - she doesn't like to be touched by anyone, she's socially awkward, and her adoptive parents kept her out of mainstream social and educational settings.
As the story progresses, it alternates between Sally's present-day story of learning more about her past, and 30-40 years prior. Her birth mother was kidnapped and kept by a terrible man. I won't give away more, but there are various characters who come into Sally's life, looking for information, or looking to amend for the past. This had me guessing throughout the story. Admittedly the ending fell a bit flat, but this is a good thriller!
Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for access to this eARC.

For about seventy-five pages I thought this was nothing more than another Eleanor Oliphant clone, a good one, but, still, nothing really original. Then came the end of part one and I realized it was something else entirely. But as I read on, I wondered, a bit, about all the great reviews this has been getting.

Sally is a great, richly drawn character. She has many flaws, which the author shows without apology. Frankly, I thought she got away with a lot, still, in the end, even given her issues. It’s simply a fact of life that one has to be able to get along in society to be part of it. And what is her actually psychiatric diagnosis? Because it’s definitely not true that there’s nothing, I think, right?

My problem was the men of STRANGE SALLY DIAMOND (perhaps some slight spoilers ahead? Skip if you haven’t read, just to be safe.) Obviously we know our big bad is a terrible, awful person, beyond redemption, but for my money, so were the other two primary male characters in the book.

One is obvious, and we know this from the way we leave him, but Mark. Why was Sally and everyone else so forgiving of Mark? This was insane to me and it rather spoiled the second half of the book. Mark was a stalker and a liar. And don’t get me started on Mark’s parents.

Then, Sally’s dad. First, who couldn’t tell from the start what type of man he was? I think that was made fairly clear from every flashback to his work with his wife, Sally and Denise. I was surprised the author felt she had to be so explicit about it.

Anyway, there were things about the book I liked, but surrounding Sally with psychotic men, unduly authoritative men, impatient men, stalker-like men…how could anyone be expected to thrive under those circumstances? And, as so often happens, too many women make too many excuses for them, not the least of whom is Sally herself (not that I blame her. She can hardly be trusted expected to have a framework for a positive male role model.)

It is nice to see Sally blossom after the death of her father (if only he had given her ANY measure of freedom before.) The townspeople might have been a little TOO nice and accepting, with only one bad apple, but, OK, there’s a lot of darkness here too.

Speaking of which, (spoilers again. Stop reading now!) it’s interesting how the author dealt with the captivity of Denise and Lindy. We only really see Denise once in the house, and it is horrible. Our experience with Lindy lasts longer, but I wish the author had been better able to capture what must have been her absolute despair. For so much of the time we see her, she seems happy, and while we know that’s not really true…I don’t know. I just cannot imagine the anguish of the situation.

So, while I liked the book a lot, and can’t give it less than four stars, I was really troubled by nearly every man in it, and Sally’s relationships with them.