3.5 stars

I received a free digital copy of this book from the publishers/author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When Oliver Ryan beats his wife into a coma, everyone who knows him is at first shocked but then begin to think about how well they really know him. Unravelling Oliver is all about the life of Oliver, and follows him from abandoned childhood to successful adult with dark secrets uncovered along the way.

This book was creepy in all the right ways. It was a bit of reverse of normal psychologic thrillers. In this one, we know who the perpetrator is and what he’s done, we just don’t know the essence of who he is. The story is a really slow but satisfying reveal of an ugly man hiding behind a manipulative, handsome exterior.

There were just so many parts of the book that left me with the shivers - one being Oliver being clearly an awful human being but also a children’s author which was just all sorts of wrong to me. I definitly felt sorry for him sometimes because of his sad childhood but some of the things he does are awful.

Parts of this book might not read as well for a non-Irish audience, particularly Barney’s chapters as a lot of his phrasing is very stereotypical Irish (and correct). I personally liked it because I know a lot of people who do talk like that but i wonder how such language and phrasing would be to non-Irish people.