
Member Reviews

This book explores wellness and control as Betsy’s pursuit of healing twists into something far more sinister.

A Sharp Scratch by Heather Darwent
⭐⭐⭐ 3.5 stars
Publication date: 29th May 2025
Thank you to Viking Books and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
It's a promise that Betsy has heard far too many times. From the child psychologist, from her husband, and from the wellness trends that scream at her from her screen.
So far, it's been a lie. But this time, she believes it. Because Betsy has been offered a place at Carn - a luxurious, unorthodox retreat, where healing really is possible. At Carn, she discovers that her imperfections make her unique, not weak. She isn't broken, just special.
I think if you liked We Spread by Iain Read, The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi and Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang, this is going to be totally up your street.
This book is bizarre, unhinged and completely disorienting. However, the writing felt a little chaotic to me (but then again, we are in the mind of a very unreliable narrator) and I found the reveal underwhelming, especially after the skillful way Darwent ramped up the tension and intrigue. This being said, it was exceedingly readable and it kept me hooked. I really appreciated the suffocating and threatening atmosphere as well as the uncomfortable (and sometimes really icky) human interactions - before, during and after Carn.

I had a hard time getting started with this, I found you're thrown in at the deep end which I usually don't have a problem with but because Betsy's character is very nonchalant it took a sec to adjust.
once the story got going I was hooked. The characters are quite simply written I found but that made it easy to follow. I would have liked a bit more on them, the "mystery" of who thev are is what kept me reading but we never find out too much.

I wasn't sure what direction A Sharp Scratch was going to go in when I started reading and was both intrigued and surprised when it went to a darker, more out-there place than first pitched.
Very atmospheric, lead character Betsy is unreliable - the best kind of narrator - you're never sure what's coming next, which is what makes it so gripping.

Weird! It was a very strange and unsettling book. When I finished reading the story it remained with me for a long time. Thought provoking and a clever concept to write about. The storyline based in a wellness clinic continued to turn in many different ways and left you wondering who to trust. Or was Betsy’s imagination taking over. All very intriguing.

I liked this book! It was quite easy to read and follow - even though there were quite a few characters. I loved The Things We Do To Our Friends so had high hopes for this! I went in a little blind because I feel the synopsis doesn’t give much away! I think I was expecting maybe a bit more of a reveal? But that was probably just me expecting it to be like a thriller 🙈
I’d recommend this book if you like a bit of a weird book!

This book sounded WEIRD and drew me in, the cover is cool too.
Betsy is a bit dysfunctional, she is an insomniac who is generally unhappy with how her life has turned out. She ends up going to a wellness retreat called Carn; a beautiful, mysterious place that claims to be able to heal people. She doesn’t know where it is, she’s blindfolded when she is taken there, and when she gets there she and the other girls are told not to question anything but just to trust the programme.
As it turns out not everything or everyone is as it seems and there are some extremely strange and unusual things going on.
The characters in this book are complex and interesting, although some of them could have been delved into more, I found myself wanting a bit more from a few of them. I didn’t like the main character and found her frustrating, but I don’t think as the reader you’re necessarily supposed to or need to like her.
This book is WEIRD. Absolutely weird, in a good way way. Nothing like anything I’ve read before. It started off quite light and fun but grew darker and more bizarre with each page
I rate this book 3 stars, it’s a very unsettling thriller/mystery, and I recommend picking it up if you fancy something a bit weird and outside of the box.

After loving The Things We Do to Our Friends, I couldn’t wait for A Sharp Scratch—and it totally delivered. Betsy heads to a mysterious wellness retreat called Carn, hoping to heal, but obviously things get creepy fast. Think rich-girl self-care meets secret rituals and emotional manipulation.
I’m in my weird-wellness-cult-reading era, so this hit the spot. Some twists were a bit obvious, but there were still gasp-worthy moments. Dark, moody, and just the right kind of messed up. Loved it.

This turned out to be quite different than I expected it to be, however, it does draw you in from the beginning. It's dark, tense, and overall it's very unsettling. The writing is disorientating, and I have to say, this is the first novel in a long while which has used that to good effect. The description of the setting is great; I could picture the vast house and all its creepy elements.

A dark and unsettling read with an interesting premise. I was drawn to it for the insomnia angle, but this fell a little flat for me.

Twisted, Dark, Tense..
Betsy has been reassured too many times. This time, is it the truth? Because Betsy really believes that it is. This time, it’s for real - and all she has to do is follow the rules. A twisted, dark and tense novel of psychological suspense where nothing is quite as it seems and relayed by an unreliable narrator - question everything.

I really loved The Things We Do to Our Friends, so I was looking forward to A Sharp Scratch and I was not disappointed. From the first few pages of I was hooked by the subtle, creeping sense that something was deeply, unsettlingly wrong. Heather Darwent’s novel is psychological suspense at its most insidious, with echoes of The Stepford Wives and The Retreat by Mark Edwards, but with a colder, more clinical core.
Betsy, the protagonist, is not your typical unreliable narrator. She’s exhausted, raw, and sharp in the way only someone who’s been struggling for years with severe sleep deprivation can be. Darwent crafts her voice with care—at times surreal, at others distinctly unstable and therefore unreliable. She is unable to recognise what’s real and what’s in her head . Through Betsy’s eyes, we’re taken on a jagged journey through mental illness, societal expectations, and the grotesque commodification of wellness culture. Her time at Carn is written with such tension that I found myself holding my breath more than once.
The characterisation here is first-rate. Betsy is layered and heartbreakingly real, but even the secondary characters pulse with motivation and ambiguity. Harry, her husband, is particularly well drawn. He’s not overtly villainous, but his actions and emotional withdrawal sharpen the knife Betsy already carries inside. Betsy’s decision to marry Harry seems, at first, like a misguided act of hope. But Derwent gradually peels this back to reveal how his personality may have accelerated Betsy’s psychological deterioration. Her sense of self begins to fray, not because she is innately unstable, but because Harry treats her instability as inconvenient. His desire to “fix” her becomes a quiet form of violence.
Carn, the wellness retreat where Betsy goes to “heal,” is rendered with unnerving beauty. It’s serene, expensive, full of soft furnishings and even softer threats. Elise, the founder, is a fascinating creation—a woman who, on the surface, champions acceptance, but underneath curates conformity with an iron will. The more you listen to Elise, the more you sense she doesn’t want to heal women so much as repurpose them. Her motive seems rooted in personal trauma—perhaps a need to regain control over a life that was once out of her hands—but there’s also a chilling sense of cultish pride. Elise believes she knows best, and that belief becomes dangerous.
Betsy has a fragile grip on reality. When she gets to Carn and meets the other female guests, the atmosphere tightens. The pacing is slow-burn but deliberate—tension builds like a low-frequency hum, and by the final third, it’s almost unbearable.
Darwent writes with a really strong atmospheric tone. The Carn is A Scottish retreat in a stately home in the countryside miles away from anywhere. The appointments are luxurious and the food is superb. But there’s no such thing as perfection, and the whole confected bliss begins to unravel. As Betsy has her first blissful sleep in a long time, Darwent begins to ratchet up the Gothic angles and what seems like a blissful escape turns into a horror of nightmare proportions.
What Darwent does so well is layering—not just in structure, but thematically. This is a novel about control, identity, and the weaponisation of wellness. Carn promises salvation, but at what cost? And who defines what “healing” looks like? The final twist isn’t a shocking reveal, but a devastating realisation. What’s really broken are the systems, relationships, and ideologies around her.
VERDICT: A Sharp Scratch is very dark indeed and also slightly surreal. The slow pace certainly won’t be for everyone but it does really create the tension and atmosphere that the book needs. This is terrific modern psychological fiction—claustrophobic, compassionate, and darkly terrifying in equal measure.

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. The synopsis totally drew me in. One of the big wins was the atmosphere. But the plot jumped around so much in the beginning that I was too confused to fully immerse myself for the remainder of the book.
I had this sense of "I must have skipped a few pages by accident" over and over again, but I'd gone back to re-read portions of the book and didn't have any clarification.
I can see the potential this has to be an absolute hit on TikTok and BookTube, once it hits the right audience, but it went straight over my head.

Reading this book was so unsettling in the best way, the description in this book of our main characters inner thoughts are creepy and grotesque. The setting will make a chill run up your spine. Our characters are all so unique and I spent my time reading trying to puzzle them out, the author does a fantastic job letting you get to know these characters on such a deep level. The plot twist within this book has my jaw on the floor. I was rethinking absolutely everything I just read in a completely different light. It’s one of those twists that’s only obvious in hindsight to me. This book is definitely going down in history as the perfect weird girl book!

I absolutely devoured this.
I was drawn in by the 'wellness but at what cost' premise as I'd recently read 'Natural Beauty' by Ling Ling Huang and was craving something similar- 'A Sharp Scratch' did not disappoint. This was an expertly crafted thriller with the creeping sense that something awful was going on beneath the surface building throughout the entire story. The twists and revelations were executed perfectly- once you've finished the book you see that all the clues were there but the conclusions were just out of reach.
I won't say much about the plot, besides the fact that it's brilliant- the description tells you everything you need to know and if you're hooked by that, then you'll eat this book up.
Thank you to Penguin General UK | Viking and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC- I actually enjoyed this so much that before I even finished I went and bought the physical copy!
This review can be viewed on Goodreads at the following link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7604589620

Thank you netgalley and publisher.
This book had a slow start for me. The story followed a woman on her wedding day, but the day doesn't go as she had expected. But it seemed that she wasn't interested. She is struggling with insomnia and her mental health. Her now husband doesn't seem to be very understanding at times with her struggles. She decides to leave and go to Carn, will it be what she's expecting?
This book has you gripped from the beginning invested in what is going to happen. It is a curious story that at times was confusing for me. It definitely leaves you wondering if this is how the main character felt. To me the story seems to reflect her mental illness and how it can change, leaving you feeling for her and wondering if she will get the help she needs.
There is a weird atmosphere and the characters in Carn seem very strange. The events that follow are unsettling. You are left curious and daring to finish the story to see how it ends.
A weird dark and illuminating story. That has you invested all the way through.

A promising premise that doesn’t quite deliver.
In A Sharp Scratch, newly married Betsy abandons her life to join Carn: a health retreat for “broken” young women. Under the guidance of the retreat’s charismatic leader, Elise, Betsy begins to blossom. But the deeper into Carn she goes, the more questions arise. What exactly is Carn? What secrets do the other women hold? And will Betsy survive whatever is lurking beneath the surface?
Darwent sets the stage for an intriguing mystery, but the execution falls flat. The atmosphere is compelling and the set-up is promising, but the plot skims the surface, the characters feel one-note, and the prose lacks any of the sharpness and polish of her debut, The Things We Do To Our Friends. I found myself wanting more depth, more tension, more… everything.
I’ll still look forward to what Darwent does next, because there’s certainly potential, but A Sharp Scratch left me underwhelmed.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Heather Darwent’s A Sharp Scratch dives into the world of wellness retreats—with a dark twist. The story follows Betsy, who’s spent years trying to “fix” herself, when she gets invited to Carn, a mysterious retreat that promises real change. At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally find peace. But as Betsy gets more involved, things start to feel off—and it turns out healing might come with some serious consequences.
The book has a cool premise and some eerie moments, but the pacing can be a bit slow. If you’re expecting a fast-paced thriller, this might not quite hit the mark. Still, the way it explores the wellness industry and the pressure to “fix” ourselves is really interesting.
Overall, A Sharp Scratch is a thoughtful, unsettling read. It’s not the most action-packed thriller out there, but if you like slow-burn suspense with a side of social commentary, it’s worth a look.

Something a little different i thought when i read and saw the brighty coloured book design.
This deserves every single five star! Well ..... i have read alot of different types of book but this one is unique in its features. It really did keep me on edge the whole way through , very difficult to predict and for this it was totally refreshing.
We meet our main character Betsy who faces challenges with her insomnia and just wants to feel better, welcome to Carn a chance to rehabiliate; accepts its all a bit strange . I wont say any more to give it away but this is totally different and for this i devoured this read very quickly , two days gone. The characters are easy to resonate with as we can see lots of characteristics in ourselves. Betsy undergoes her treatment and the food sounds amazing and of course its for free ? Does anything come for free ? Already i felt my suspicions start to build, and the captivating place of Carn and what it offers. Although the helpers and people seem so genuine but after a while the fascade starts to slip as we know people dont run and work to clockwork. The complex characters in this book dont appear to be playing along as they should be. What will become of them ?
The writing is highly descriptive. unique and totally absorbing. If you want to be engrossed and immersed and slightly horrified at times then please do read this .
Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this prior to release. Good scene setting but very slow pacing which made it a challenging read for me. Have heard great things about this author so will read her other work