Paper Cut is a sharp and twisting psychological thriller that delivers on unreliable narrators, cults, low-level (read: very messy) celebrities and a plot that a true-crime podcast would eat up. In short, I highly enjoyed!
Opening sentence: My mother never lets me forget the difference between her fame and my infamy.
The Golden Girl
Our lead character, Lucy Golden enjoys low-level fame (or as the opening sentence says, infamy) due to a memoir she released in her 20s that documented a high-drama incident in her teenage years: she escaped from a Californian cult and reveals exactly what went on there. Her voice has authority as cult leader, Max is none other than her father… although she didn’t know that until she got to the cult.
Her mother, revered photographer, Diana Golden, never told her who her father was, it transpires there’s a few more things her self-absorbed, non-maternal mother failed to mention to Lucy too. It’s fair to say their relationship is a strained one.
‘Your mother is an expert at capturing tragedy and wrapping it up in a bow for profit and praise.’
She works hard for the money
To make a living, Lucy tours the talk-circuit and has a true-crime fan following. She’s keen to stay culture-relevant and increase her book sales. Which is why, when Isaac, documentary film-maker of the moment, wants to interview her and look more closely at what happened to her that fateful summer she joined the cult, she agrees. But with trepidation. You see, everything she wrote about in her memoir, and the public now takes as fact, may not be 100% true…
All along, that summer had teeth. It promised to bite, and it did. It swallowed me whole.
Told in both present day and as extracts from Lucy’s memoir, Rattlesnake, we get the version of Lucy now, battling with her web of lies, while the story she spun in Rattlesnake is slowly revealed. This duality works so well to build tension and you really are gripped, you have to find out what really happened to Lucy.
Paper Cut is Rachel Taff’s debut novel and I really enjoyed her tone of voice and sharp phrasing coming through the pages. It was the way it was written that made this cult story pop against others you might have read. One for your TBR list!
- Get your copy of Paper Cut here;
- Published by Corvus February 2026;
- 304 pages;
- My rating:
Books on the 7:47 