Verity and Mike are a couple that are different to everyone else – they understand each other better and have their own game to prove this: the Crave. She draws in another man, he runs in to save her. But this time it’s gone further than usual – she’s getting married.
I picked this book as it was recommended by Gillian Flynn, one of my favourite authors who is brilliant at plot twists, so I hoped this would have the same kind of feel, and to quite an extent it did – a main character with a dark mind, a plot that keeps turning back and forth, and a reader that can’t make up their mind what to believe! Told form Mike’s point of view, it’s truly a psychological thriller – one that there aren’t all that many of any more. I really enjoyed this one!

This isn't a book I would usually read, however, I enjoyed reading it.
The characters of Mike and Verity are of extremely twisted individuals, but I'm enjoying the sociopathic way that Mike is written.

Thrilling, twisted and clever - I couldn't put this book down.

I have just gulped this book down. It's excellently done. I am a mental health professional, and sometimes I don't quite buy the psychology of characters in books, but I absolutely believed in Mike, his experiences, and his responses to them.

Mike is a bit of a Frankenstein's monster. To a certain extent I think he was created by Verity, but that's not what I mean exactly. He is a monster, he is scary, he is so delusional that you know things will inevitably end in violence, but you can't help feeling sorry for him because he is so damaged by his childhood. He interprets everything through his delusional ideas about his relationship with Verity, and is incapable of seeing the objective truth about anything.

The final scenes in the court room are particularly well done. The double standards society holds for men and women are pulled open and demonstrated, and the fact that the law is not about finding out the truth, it is about winning a case.

Verity is ironically named. The truth in this book is slippery, hard to pin down, changes depending on who is looking at it.

Excellent read.

"Part of me doesn't want to write it all down but my lawyer says I must"

This is a page-turner about fantasies and obsession as Mike, however many times his ex-girlfriend tells him it's over, knows that she really means something quite different...

There's a good premise here but the story becomes increasingly repetitive, especially in the courtroom scenes where things we know are endlessly rehashed. The points about women being put on sexual trial are important but feel a bit shoehorned in. I couldn't help feeling, too, that the psychology of an unloved child turning into a controlling fantasist is a little glib.

Despite some misgivings this works as switch-off escapism and is an entertaining read.

Absolutely compelling from first word to last. Read in one sitting I feel like I didn't even blink although obviously I must have done. Clever. So so so clever. I can't even begin to unravel the layers of clever in Our Kind Of Cruelty. Putting the actual psychology FIRMLY back into the psychological thriller Araminta Hall has written a barnstormer of a novel that fully captured my imagination.

This is a love story. No it really is. But what kind of a love story is it? That may be the unanswerable question...

Mike and Verity are a couple you will never forget. In fact I can't tell you anything much about how the plot runs because it is hard to do that without giving away the genius of this novel - it is a furiously intriguing read, a cleverly plotted one, it has many many levels and is socially relevant in a way that is not immediately obvious. It is not until the end that you realise what the author has done and how she has done it, your brain will catch up with you and you'll think back over the entire story and look at it with thoughtful eyes.

I'm not talking about a twist in the tale - I'm talking about the whole twist BEING the tale, which is what I mean about putting the psychology firmly back into psychological thrillers.

For the rest you'll just have to read to find out. The authors afterword gives perspective and I'd recommend reading that too if you don't normally. This is one I'll be thinking about for a while. Bound to be a huge hit and a "water cooler" moment of 2018.

Highly Recommended.