(#gifted @bloomsburypublishing) Nothing Can Hurt You, releasing in the UK in June, is marketed as a thriller on Goodreads, but I think those who go in looking for a breakneck thriller will be disappointed. There is a murder, and the book does move along at a swift pace, but it’s more of a character-driven novel that forces the reader to consider questions they might not want to think too closely about.

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There’s a huge cast of characters, each chapter narrated by someone different. Goldberg has laid out a lifetime’s worth of characters, but a lifetime cut short, all offering snapshots of lives before and after the murder of Sara Morgan. Some of them are tied to her by only the thinnest of threads, and some knew her intimately, but all of them come together to form a messy picture of one woman’s life and its tragic end.

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I love the idea of exploring how one person can enter, however briefly, into the lives of so many others. If you think about yourself, even if you’ve got a small family, we all went to school with people, we all pick up coffee in our local café, we all buy food, and all those things link us, no matter how tenuously, to other human beings, all of whom have their own lives doing exactly the same thing. Every one of those people has a different recollection or memory or opinion of you. You’re not the same person to your mother, your best friend, your old babysitter and your ex-boyfriend’s sister. It’s mind-boggling when you think about it for a second.

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There’s also some interesting commentary here on how murder victims, especially young women, are perceived. There’s always a tendency to promote them to sainthood in death, as if they’re only worthy of remembrance if they led perfect lives, which is obviously never the case.

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Each chapter and each voice feels unique, which is very impressive as I often find multiple viewpoints can run the risk of blending together into one narrative voice. Not the case here. I definitely recommend for a dark and thoughtful ‘mystery’ with a difference.