Sally is the town oddball in her small, Irish village, raised by a psychiatrist father and a GP mother, she avoids social interaction, is emotionally unattached and thinks she might be autistic. When her father dies in his sleep, she remembers that he said to just throw him out with the trash, so she puts his body in the farm incinerator, setting off a chain of events that changes her quiet way of life, and also brings secrets her father kept about her past out into the open.

This book is remarkable. It’s brilliantly written, sometimes darkly funny and sometimes just plain dark, and I enjoyed it more than I’ve enjoyed a book in a while. The story is written from Sally’s perspective, and the way the author writes her lack of emotional affect is sort of hilarious and slightly chilling. She is so logical and literal, almost like an alien, and so deeply anti-social. At the start of the book, Sally sometimes pretends to be deaf to avoid talking to people, and it was really funny. On some level, though, this lack of deep feeling and calculation also is potentially dangerous. There’s often a sense of impending danger in this book, initially because Sally could hurt someone else, and then as the plot unfolds, you see how anyone could take advantage of her because she’s so naive as well. She really can’t see when someone is lying to her or has possible nefarious intentions, and it really dialled up the tension for me as certain characters got closer to her.

I don’t want to say too much about the plot of this book. I went in mostly blind, which made it so much more fun. We open with Sally and her world, as it stands, and then things start to change. There are so many twists and turns in this story and they are often dark and dramatic. As we go along, we see Sally brought out into the world and interacting with the village, growing as a person. But the really juicy stuff lies in her past and the way it’s coming to impact her present. Perhaps it’s not saying too much to mention The Room and just to let you know her father has extensive files on her in his office that she’s never seen, and leave it at that so you can enjoy finding out for yourself. There are some twists in this book and I hope that none of them get spoiled for you before you start reading.

I can’t really say that there was anything in this book that was a wrong note. I did wonder a little about the conclusions of this story. I liked the ending, though it’s, partly, quite dark. I found the character of Peter and the outcome of his part of the plot absolutely chilling, and wondered what point was meant to be made there about the nature of evil. Were we meant to be sympathetic to him or people like him? I hope not. But in the end, I really ate this book up, and I recommend it.

Read It If: there are some very dark themes in this one, so it may not be for everyone, but I enjoyed it so much. It’s brilliantly written, sometimes chilling or sad, sometimes quite funny.

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC of this book for review.