About The Book
Book: The Truth About Ruby Cooper
Author: Liz Nugent
Standalone or Series: Standalone
Publisher: Penguin Sandycove
Publication Date (UK): 12th March 2026
🔍Standout Read. Awarded to books I highly recommend.
My Review
“For the second time in six weeks, I woke up with the wrong husband.”
Well the first line from the prologue is up there with the opening for Strange Sally Diamond, so the book was already off to a good start!
The Truth About Ruby Cooper is another book from this year that I really wanted to read prior to the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival next month. I’m sure it’s one people will want to chat about and rightly so as it’s brilliant but also difficult to review online without spoilers!
The story starts in 1999 and ends around 2026. When we first meet the titular character Ruby, she is sixteen and her sister, Erin, is eighteen. Erin is smart, beautiful, kind and has her first boyfriend who she’s smitten with. Ruby feels like she’s living in Erin’s shadow, she has to try harder at school and her physique is still developing and changing. Their father runs a church in Boston, both girls attend and follow the religion. From the outside, they look like the picture perfect family unit.
It’s no spoiler that an “incident” occurs that splits the family. The book covers that and the aftermath, unfolding predominantly from Ruby and Erin’s perspective, with additional points of view added in later in the book.
This book is wild. There are characters that you will absolutely relish in hating. And just when you think you’ve read something truly awful, Nugent chucks petrol on the fire and off it roars again! It felt a little like watching a car crash in slow motion. Engrossing, horrid and magnificent.
Beth Reads Crime 
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