'Gripping, sharp and sultry - I couldn't put it down' Pandora Sykes
'Captivating, serpentine and affecting ... It subverts the tropes of the "dead girl" genre in ways that impart its female characters with a dark majesty and mystery all their own' Megan Abbott
The Virgin Suicides meets Little Fires Everywhere: inspired by a true story, this haunting novel pieces together a chorus of voices to explore the aftermath of a college student's death.
On a cold day in 1997, student Sara Morgan was killed in the woods surrounding her liberal arts college in upstate New York. Her boyfriend, Blake Campbell, confessed, only to be acquitted following a plea of temporary insanity.
In the wake of this senseless act of violence, the case comes to haunt a strange and surprising network of community members, from the young woman who discovers Sara's body to the junior reporter who senses its connection to convicted local serial killer John Logan.
As the years pass, others search for retribution or explanation, including Sara's half-sister who, stifled by her family's silence about Blake, poses as a babysitter and seeks out her own form of justice, and the teenager Sara used to babysit, who begins writing to Logan as part of a class project.
Disclaimer before going into it blind though -this is not psychological suspense, nor a thriller. It will leave more questions unanswered than it answers and it reads closer to literary fiction. It's sometimes confusing as it jumps between characters (there's a lot of them) and you'll get invested in one character only to never hear from them again. BUT if you can look past these flaws this is a beautiful, haunting book.
Nothing Can Hurt You is an exploration of how one tragic event (the murder of Sara by her boyfriend, Blake) affects a host of different people in different ways, even decades after the event. I'd initially given this 4 or 4.5 stars, but after a few weeks of reflection I've jumped the gun and given it the coveted Sophia 5/5 stars because I cannot stop thinking about it. Nicola Maye Goldberg is an incredible, underrated writer and I look forward to reading everything she has ever written, ever.
Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Books for an ARC of this captivating novel
