Nothing Can Hurt You centres on the killing of a young student, Sara, by her boyfriend, Blake, who we are told has schizophrenia and who claims to have taken LSD on the night he slit Sara’s throat. Blake comes from a wealthy family, has never been in trouble before and has the means to arrange for a good lawyer. Perhaps surprisingly, he is acquitted on the grounds of insanity and goes free.
This novel is a hard one to pin down. We’re not really finding out more about what happened to Sara, nor are we learning more about the killer. There’s little focus on questioning motive or even really seeming to come down on a certain view on how we as a society deal with such events/people. I ended this not entirely sure how I was meant to feel about things.
While this doesn’t fit the expectations of a thriller, it was cleverly constructed. Each chapter has as its focus someone involved with the murder of Sara. We begin with the woman who discovered her body, but we also have a young girl who she babysat, her half-sister and a journalist investigating the story amongst others. What they all have in common is a sense of disruption following the death of Sara.
In style and focus, this reminded me very much of Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13. I was somewhat surprised to learn this was based on a true story, as the way in which it is written makes it seem so separate from the everyday world most of us inhabit. I’m grateful to NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication, and it does strike me as a book that will offer up new links/perspectives upon further reading.

Inspired by a true story, this book had me gripped right from the beginning wondering how much was fact vs fiction. The story begins with the murder of a young woman and follows on with the impact this act had on the community around her. I loved the way you don’t necessarily know who the focus of attention is on and what their connection to the victim is until it slowly unravels. None of the characters are particularly likeable, which feels real, and the undertone of small, violent acts against women and the way they accept it felt incredibly poignant and true to life.
Suspenseful, intriguing and with thoughtfully written characters, I would definitely recommend.

I really enjoyed this one. Told from twelve different points of view, the book follows the aftermath of a college student's murder by her boyfriend and the effect it has on different members of the community. At first, the multiple POVs was hard to adjust to but I'm glad I didn't give up. The prose is stunning and the characters well crafted. I don't think this should be marketed as a thriller - it is more literary fiction. Overall, a great story that had me hooked from the outset.

I really, really wanted to love this book. The premise sounded very interesting - and I like the subversion of the genre, so much so that I prioritised reading this over many other books. Even though I did enjoy it, it didn't really work for me which is disappointing.

I read somewhere, perhaps on Net Galley, that 'Nothing Can Hurt You' is comparable to Lisa Taddeo's 'Three Women'. Yes, I can see the similarities, albeit fairly tenuous ones, but this non-fiction book deals with three women's lives, particularly linked to sexual needs, desires and mistreatment. 'Nothing Can Hurt You' confronts issues which are in some way connected - the treatment of women, specifically - but it tackles such things in a very different, often jarring way.

The novel concentrates on the death of Sara Morgan but this isn't a simple whodunit. Instead, Goldberg tackles the mystery by looking at it from different viewpoints, ranging from Sara's half-sister, and her wheedling into the life of Sara's murderer (her boyfriend at the time), through to the life of said murderer (Blake). However, for me, I found that the non-linear structure was too jerky - and the book, being fairly short, is not long enough to develop the different sections in sufficient depth.

Part of the novel is written in epistolary form - again, though, this jars alongside the story and the letters go on and on - and the reader, as a result, is unable to maintain their focus on other angles.

Ultimately, the idea is clever and it does put a different slant on a conventional murder-mystery. Having said this, I found the read focused too much on moving on to a different perspective when the previous one hadn't been fully explored. Admittedly, I may well be in the minority, particularly based on the reviews I have read, and so be it if so. It is compared, somewhat, to 'Gone Girl' but I don't think this is a fair comparison. - Flynn's novel is more sophisticated and well-developed and the characterisation stronger, more compelling.

So - see what you think. Yes, you'll enjoy the novel qualities of the book, I'm sure - I just wish I could have got more out of it. Each to their own, I guess.

This was an interesting read and it felt more like an anthology story than just one continuous story. I enjoyed how it was told and thought the main premise was done really well. The writing was exciting and fresh and i couldn't put this down. The way it explored the violence was interesting and felt new in a way that other stories like this have not thought to.

‘Nothing can hurt you’ is not your traditional psychological thriller and it’s story is not linear but that is why I really loved this novel. The central event is the murder of college student, Sara Morgan, who is killed by her boyfriend Blake in 1997. From the beginning we see the ripple effect of her death on her loved ones and even those who never knew her; Nicola Maye Goldberg is a master at layering up different narratives from different points of view to capture the full impact of Sara’s murder. I have not enjoyed a book structured in this way since David Mitchell’s ‘Bone clocks’ but like Mitchell by the end I was captivated by the way the story is built up at a gradual pace and we see the connectivity between all of the characters.
I loved the range of voices that are included from Sara’s half sister who was just two when she died, to the later life of Blake after the trial, to the little girl Sara used to babysit who begins writing to a murderer in prison. There is a wonderful aspect of obsession that underlies all of the characters, tying them all to one another. I loved the unusual construction of this book and I am so happy to have found this incredible author!

Inspired by a true story, this compelling novel pulls together a multitude of voices to explore the aftermath of a young girls death. Sara was murdered by her college boyfriend, Blake, in New York in 1997. Acquitted, his plea of temporary insanity raises more questions than it can answer.

Reminiscent of Jon McGregor’s ‘Reservoir 13’, Nicola Maye Goldberg creates a vivid community surrounding Sara and Blake. I love how this is told through little snapshots of so many different lives; from people on the periphery such as the woman that discovered Sara’s body, to those closest to them like Blakes’ college room mate and Sara’s half sister.

I thought this was intoxicating, practically reading it in one sitting. The subject matter is brutal and haunting, exploring themes of gender based violence, justice, mercy and morality yet the writing is tender and beautiful too.

“Everyone knows bad things happen to good people - that’s just life. Good people doing bad things, that’s what’s really scary.”

Thanks Netgalley and Raven Books for my copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) for the arc of Nothing can hurt you by Nicola Maye Goldberg.

This is based upon a true story, winter 1997, Sara Morgan was murdered in the woods. which was around her liberal arts college. Blake her boyfriend confessed to this and his plea of insanity is having questions come up than it orignally answered. In around the time of his accquital this case actually ends up haunting a network of the community, from the reporters whom senses it could be linked to a serial killer whom is named John Logan to the lady who actually found Sara's body. The half sister of Sara is still very suffocated by her family's silence about Blake. She ends up in which she poses as a babysitter and she tried to seeks out her own form of justice in the way she wants whereas the teenager Sara used to babysit for starts writing to the serial killer in prison.....

This was a thrilling and enthralling ride, it was told in many POV'S it is such a beautifully written story of love, loss, murder and redemption!

Definitely recommend
5 Stars⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

What an unassuming little book.

I tentatively started it at lunchtime yesterday, thinking it was only okay and I'd slowly pick my way through it this week. I ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting.

Multiple narratives can be confusing and tricky, with one narrative being more preferable to the other but I think it was managed very well here. The oscillating narrative voices, some directly connected to Sara, others indirectly, all were well-written and interesting.

What I found interesting about this book is how it plays with not only the conventional reflections we expect from the circumstances, but how it dredges up the bizarre: Blake's college friend sees a woman on a flight who reminds him of Sara, and he reflects on how he might have seen signs of what was to come. He is angry at Blake for tainting what should have been golden college memories, but in every memory there is the indelible stain of what Blake did - but this is not what I took away from his narrative. It's that the woman on the flight and his own girlfriend, in the same segment, challenge him on his belief that he is a "nice guy" and how self-centered he is, unable to engage with women beyond what he wants.

On the more "conventional" end of the spectrum, when Sara's now adult half-sister applies for a job as a babysitter for Blake's daughter, and is found out by Blake, their confrontation is hardly explosive or vengeful as you would expect in most thrillers. In fact, it challenges the standard pattern of how we categorize and think about victims:

"My father has never been angry with you. At least not as far as I know. I think it's..." I struggled for the right word and eventually settled on "perverse. He should want you dead. If it was me who was killed, I would want someone to avenge me. And if not my father, then who?"
"No, you wouldn't."
"What?"
"You wouldn't want someone to avenge you if you were killed. You wouldn't want anything because you'd be dead."
I didn't know what to say to that.
"That's the awful paradox of it. We're all left trying to figure out what the dead person would want, and you can never really figure it out, because they're dead. And even if you did somehow figure it out, you couldn't give it to them.'"

Nothing Can Hurt You plays around with our concepts of what is just and fair, if Blake was acquitted and he has shown remorse, what else can we expect? Is lifelong incarceration really justice (when he has grown-up in to a model citizen and lives with his actions every day) or is it just cold revenge? How can we know what Sara would want? As Lizzie notes, how can we say "Sara could have been" when she had no immediate direction, and all avenues closed to her the moment she died. Sara ceased as a possibility and the most likely truth is what insults our mob sensibilities: Sara would have married Blake.

This whole book is a tangled yarn of narratives and ideas, with no overall objective because we cannot revive Sara and Blake's verdict, while discomforting, might have been apt. Directionless books can often frustrate me but I was entranced, there's hardly any decorative language here, no fistful of adjectives or clever metaphors, it's just concentrated narrative and it works so well. The synopsis emphasizes gender based violence, but aside from a liberal college vigil, this isn't really explored. The other emphasis is on obsession and voyeurism and I think Goldberg really excels at this. She skillfully dissects how how we parade murder victims in the cultural spotlight, à la Twin Peak's Laura Palmer, condemning the perpetrator and braying for our own concept of "justice" with the same breath that we consume true crime as a product. I think this is a really interesting perspective in the True Crime obsessed landscape, where TV shows, books and podcasts on the destruction of others are marketed consumer products.

What an unexpected trip this book was. I will definitely be reviewing when it comes out in stores.

This was a great book. I don't read crime/thrillers, partly because I dislike the way the victims (nearly always a gruesomely murdered young woman) have no backstory of their own. This feels like literary fiction that happens to have a crime theme. Sara Morgan has been murdered by her boyfriend, but the book explores the web of people tangentially involved in her life, from her much younger half sister, the boyfriend who had suffered from mental illness, to the journalist who writes about an unrelated serial killer, to a naive young girl writing letters to a prisoner. There was a huge array of characters that were so well described, all with this linking thread. I really enjoyed finding out about them all. A very unusual, dark but enjoyable book.

Oh this book is BEAUTIFUL.

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.

There have been a number of books recently which decentre that trope of crime fiction: the murdered college girl. This one lightly touches on issues of gendered violence and the way race, class and gender combine to - possibly - exonerate a killer. The thing is, the treatment feels cursory and there's no real narrative arc. The contrast between the dead girl whose life is stopped and her killer who goes on to marry and father a child is made plain, but the fragmented narratives of circling stories are disengaged then just stop. The writing is engaging but the concept feels unclear and unfinished - masses of potential but this could have been shaped to be more incisive.

Nothing Can Hurt You is about the death of Sara, an arts college student who was murdered by her boyfriend Blake Campbell. Blake confesses to her murder and is found not guilty under temporary insanity.
The story follows many different people related or friends with both Sara and/or Blake in short sections showing how Sara’s death has impacted their lives. I read this book in a day, it was creepy and very hard hitting at times, but otherwise a very interesting book. I sometimes was a little confused over what time period I was in as this seemed to jump around a lot. As there were a lot of characters, I was also often confused who I was reading about and did not really connect with any of the characters as everyone had such short sections. However, even though I did not necessarily connect with any characters it was really fascinating to hear how one death impacted so many in various ways and how it altered the way some people lived their life afterwards.

This novel is based on a real crime, and is a truly haunting exploration of what the death of a young college student, Sara Morgan, has on everyone connected to the event. Sara is killed by her boyfriend, Blake. Blake later claims he can remember nothing of the events surrounding Sara’s death and, having been on drugs at the time, is found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.

Although this is really a series of inter-connected characters, and events, it reads very much as a whole and complete novel, which is quite difficult to pull off. We read of the repercussions of the murder from those who were very close to either Sara or Blake – Sara’s mother, Blake’s sister. There are also those who recall very little, but feel the presence of both Sara, and what happened, as a huge presence in their life – such as Sara’s half-sister, just a toddler at the time, or the young girl that Sara babysit for. Other characters are really on the periphery of events – a town sheriff who knows Sara’s mother, the woman who finds Sara’s body – but whose lives intersect with the aftermath of the murder.

Alongside Sara’s storyline, is that of a serial killer, arrested at almost the same time of Blake. Logan is found guilty of the murder of six women, one whose name is dropped neatly into the first chapter, for us to shockingly discover as a victim later in the book. Indeed, one of the creepiest sections of this novel are a series of letters between a young girl, connected with Sara, who begins to correspond with Logan in prison.

It is difficult to say that you enjoyed a book, written about such a troubling subject, but I thought this was thought provoking and well written. Goldberg shows how easily those who purport to love, can hurt. How being touched by tragedy leads people to question themselves, or the behaviour of those around them. How it is a constant presence, or a troubling empty space – unresolved and tragic. I think this would be an excellent choice for book groups, with much to discuss. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

This is a fictionalised account of the murder of a female college student by her boyfriend in the late 90s.

Similar to ‘Disappearing Earth’ by Julia Phillips, this is a series of not quite interconnected short stories focusing on how various people were affected by the death of Sara Morgan and its aftermath.

From the lonely woman who finds her body, to her half-sister who tracks down her murderer; the chorus of voices paints a landscape of systemic gender-based violence.

A young woman is found with her throat slit in the woods and her wealthy boyfriend-murderer, pleading temporary insanity, escapes prison. This is a story so tragically familiar as to almost be cliche, but this book is a reminder that a dead young woman is more than just another number - one death can cause an exponential amount of pain. In the form that Elizabeth Strout has mastered, the book is a series of vignettes of lives shaken by the murder of Sara Campbell - the housewife suffering from childhood PTSD from her mother’s abusive lover who, unable to tell her husband that his friend with the missing daughter groped her violently in their home, leaves the house and encounters Sara’s body; the prosecutor who joined public service to create justice in a world where her sister was brutally raped by her prom date; Sara’s college best friend who is haunted by her friend’s frozen perfection next to her own imperfect reality and growing cellulite. Many of these vignettes are of women whose lives too, as so many other women’s, are scratched by male violence and entitlement. These, however minor, are amplified in the wake of Sara’s death - the boyfriend of a local journalist covering the case unthinkingly calls his band ‘Kill Olivia’. This book is a protest against the forgetting of dead women. We should not, and cannot afford to not care. In a quote that beautifully and profoundly speaks to our times, one character explains that people ‘think empathy is a limited resource, that they have to hoard it, only give it to those who need it the most—it’s not. It’s a muscle. You have to exercise it.’

A stunning debut (technically? Goldberg's Other Women, a novella with Sad Spell Press, is also wonderful but I think functionally impossible to find now, although well worth it if you can) that weaves together disparate voices to show how the aftershocks of a college student's murder by her boyfriend ripple, disperse, and refract. The prose is clear and luminous, which is an overused word but accurate here, I think - it has a pellucid clarity and ease, and some striking, lovely images. A sad, quiet, beautiful novel.

This novel centres around the murder of Sara Morgan in 1997 by her boyfriend Blake Campbell during a schizophrenic episode. Although Blake is charged with her murder he is found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. This book takes a different path from most books that surround a murder as it looks at a number of different characters affected to a greater or lesser degree. Thus it’s hard to categorise as it’s atypical and is more of a social commentary on the ripple effects of a terrible event rather than a thriller or crime novel which makes it very interesting. However, there are multiple points of view and it jumps from character to character so jotting down who is who is very helpful! I hasten to add that is not a negative comment as I think this is a clever book. It’s character driven and peers into the heart and soul of a crime. I really like how Sara is portrayed as a person rather than a victim and we really get to ‘see’ her. We can understand how a murder impacts on family members and friends who continue to ‘see’ her everywhere and she remains an constant in their lives. Taking this direction and slant allows us to see how lives are blighted and change irrevocably. This is a well written book and has a good pace.

Overall, this is a fascinating theme and a good read and it’s worth sticking with the multiple perspectives as it’s very illuminating.

With thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Press for the ARC

This book is definitely not a mystery/thriller as we already know the who, the what, the why and the where. Instead the novel tells the stories from multiple points of view of the people who are all affected by the death of Sara. I enjoyed the book a lot, Goldberg was skilful in drawing you in to the characters quickly and found myself keen to find out more about them and the impact Sara’s death has on them. We hear from Marianne the housewife who discovered her body, her young half sister Luna and Jonathan the sheriff who investigated her death amongst many others.

There are no chapters in the book so one point to note is that you can be halfway through a paragraph before realising the author has moved on to the next character. Goldberg is very skilful in building up a very in-depth picture of each character in a very short time however the reason the book is 3 stars instead of 4 or 5 is the way each characters story is left almost halfway through.. Because I was invested I want to know how Marianne got on in her unhappy marriage and if Jonathan the sheriff solves his current case. Conclusions to all these stories would make such a difference to this novel.

Thanks to Netgalley for letting me review this arc copy.

This book is in the thriller genre and if you're looking for a hard hitting thriller, I'd say keep looking. But that doesn't take away from how good this book is. I flew through it in 2 sittings, the flow of writing was conversational and so easy to just delve into and get lost in the writing. The book follows the. murder of a teenage girl, and through entwining stories we learn about the aftermath of the murder and. everyone affected. This book is clever, and leaves you thinking. It also makes you realise just how far and wide murder can affect those around the 'blast radius' and how it can truly. define. the rest of those involved, it makes you think, is the victim of the murder truly. the only victim?