Thank you to Netgalley, Araminta Hall and Cornerstone for my ARC of Our Kind of Cruelty.

Summary

Mike is shocked when he returns from a job in New York, to find his girlfriend Verity has got engaged to another man. But Mike is convinced this is all part of the game he and Verity play; The Crave. Mike is determined to win Verity round and get things back on track, no matter the consequences. A dark, twisting novel about desire, deceit and mental health.

Review

I found this novel frankly enthralling. Mike is such a great character and as the author herself attests, a rare character, a flawed and damaged male character. A male character dealing with the abuse he suffered as a child and the personality traits this has given him as a grown man. It's cleverly written from Mike's perspective, his thoughts and feelings about Verity, his perspective on his work and the things that have happened like the 'American incident' and the reason it is so clever is that even though the story is told from Mike's perspective, it is clear to the reader (and everyone except Mike) that what is really happening is not what Mike thinks is happening.

Mike's spiral out of control is a slow burn nightmare that takes the reader along a fearsome journey, every moment waiting for the bomb to go off. But it's not that straight forward, in the end I was left feeling that maybe Mike wasn't so mad after all...

Our a kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall is a dark psychological thriller about obsession, jealousy and lies. When Mike and Verity's relationship comes to an end, Mike is in denial and thinks that this is just one of Verity's games. He feels he has to keep tabs on her waiting for the sign from her that their relationship will resume. This story was a disturbing read. I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House UK for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a psychological drama rather than a thriller, in the style of Patricia Highsmith, with a very believable portrait of a manipulative sociopath – and the influences behind his behaviour. The reader soon realises that Mike, the narrator, is not so much unreliable as damaged and delusional. He is prone to misreading his interactions with other people due to a lack of social skills resulting from a deprived early childhood. So it's not surprising that his passionate relationship with Verity, involving dangerous sex games, soon gets out of hand. Because we are only given Mike’s version of events, a great deal of the novel’s appeal is trying to decide whether his obsession for Verity is reciprocated and which of the pair is most implicated in the tragic outcome. The ensuing courtroom denouement offers a chilling reminder about the sexual double standard still pertaining between men and women in the eyes of the Law.

our kind of cruelty by Araminta Hall.
Mike knows that most of us travel through the world as one half of a whole, desperately searching for that missing person to make us complete.
But he and Verity are different. They have found each other and nothing and no one will tear them apart.
It doesn't matter that Verity is marrying another man.
You see, Verity and Mike play a game together, a secret game they call 'the crave', the aim being to demonstrate what they both know: that Verity needs Mike, and only Mike.
Verity's upcoming marriage is the biggest game she and Mike have ever played. And it's for the highest stakes.
Except this time in order for Mike and Verity to be together someone has to die ...
an absolutely fantastic read. I loved the story and the characters. I hope there is more to come as I feel the story hadn't finished. especially for Mike. 5*. Highly recommended.

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.