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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
A book has not surprised me like this for a long time. I was completely surprised at how the book turned out, how the plot unfolded. Lesson? Never be fooled by a books cover and its first 60 pages. This was thrilling, so unique and different from books that Ive read before.
Gillian Flynn is a master. Not only in writing, but she's skilled in the inner workings of the human mind. The book was thoroughly researched, and the characters come off as normal people at the beginning but as the story progresses you see that there is more to them. The alternating POV's werent confusing, and even though their thoughts gave you clue's as to what kind of people they were, you can never predict what they would do next. It was also very impressive how the two characters had different views on the same situation, and they had different ways of writing, but I never got confused. That's how good Flynn is.
The narration was great, too. You could hear the tone of their words, the smugness or the controlled fury behind each remark. You can practically see the fear oozing between the letters. The thoughts behind the things they say are cold and calculated, which emphasizes the mind games they are playing. This was very crucial in uncovering the true nature of the Dunnes, who are very vivid characters. It makes the story more thrilling, and Flynn doesnt reveal too much in every chapter and makes you want to know what happens next.
But even if I am awestruck with the astounding story and simple brilliance of the book, I must admit the story is pretty freaky. Still, I recommend this book for everyone who loves and page-turning, fast paced thriller.
Gillian Flynn is a master. Not only in writing, but she's skilled in the inner workings of the human mind. The book was thoroughly researched, and the characters come off as normal people at the beginning but as the story progresses you see that there is more to them. The alternating POV's werent confusing, and even though their thoughts gave you clue's as to what kind of people they were, you can never predict what they would do next. It was also very impressive how the two characters had different views on the same situation, and they had different ways of writing, but I never got confused. That's how good Flynn is.
The narration was great, too. You could hear the tone of their words, the smugness or the controlled fury behind each remark. You can practically see the fear oozing between the letters. The thoughts behind the things they say are cold and calculated, which emphasizes the mind games they are playing. This was very crucial in uncovering the true nature of the Dunnes, who are very vivid characters. It makes the story more thrilling, and Flynn doesnt reveal too much in every chapter and makes you want to know what happens next.
But even if I am awestruck with the astounding story and simple brilliance of the book, I must admit the story is pretty freaky. Still, I recommend this book for everyone who loves and page-turning, fast paced thriller.
I am going to start this review by saying it is going to be rather short because I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this book and I am afraid I might share spoilers. With this being a mystery/psychological thriller you really want to go into knowing very little and any spoilers can ruin the story because there is so much suspense and twists.
“Gone Girl is one of the best and most frightening portraits of psychopathy I’ve ever read. Nick and Amy manipulate each other with savage, merciless and often darkly witty dexterity. This is a wonderful and terrifying book about how the happy surface normality and the underlying darkness can become too closely interwoven to separate.”
—Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of Faithful Place and Into the Woods
Tana French has summed up this book better than I ever could. On the surface this book is a love story. About a couple dealing with the problems that come with marriage and how being past your prime and dealing with unhappiness in life can transfers over to the relationship. Flynn has crafted a beautifully dark and intense story that looks past the surface layer and lets you into the inter workings of Nick and Amy. There were times throughout the story that I sure did question Flynn’s sanity. The way the story was put together and unfolded was fantastic. As with all mysteries I tried to figure out what had happened and just when I thought I had an idea of what was going on, Flynn threw a twist at the story and changed everything. The way she plays with the characters flaws, enhance the suspense because you get to a point where you aren’t sure what to believe. The characters were brilliantly crafted and really are messed up.
Overall this was a wonderfully devious story that makes you question the sanity of not only the characters, but the author as well. Gillian Flynn is absolutely brilliant. Her writing and story telling is fantastic and created a superb mystery/thriller. I highly recommend this book and would definitely say that you should read it before you see the movie because I don’t think it would create the same atmosphere and brilliance if you know what is to happen.
“Gone Girl is one of the best and most frightening portraits of psychopathy I’ve ever read. Nick and Amy manipulate each other with savage, merciless and often darkly witty dexterity. This is a wonderful and terrifying book about how the happy surface normality and the underlying darkness can become too closely interwoven to separate.”
—Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of Faithful Place and Into the Woods
Tana French has summed up this book better than I ever could. On the surface this book is a love story. About a couple dealing with the problems that come with marriage and how being past your prime and dealing with unhappiness in life can transfers over to the relationship. Flynn has crafted a beautifully dark and intense story that looks past the surface layer and lets you into the inter workings of Nick and Amy. There were times throughout the story that I sure did question Flynn’s sanity. The way the story was put together and unfolded was fantastic. As with all mysteries I tried to figure out what had happened and just when I thought I had an idea of what was going on, Flynn threw a twist at the story and changed everything. The way she plays with the characters flaws, enhance the suspense because you get to a point where you aren’t sure what to believe. The characters were brilliantly crafted and really are messed up.
Overall this was a wonderfully devious story that makes you question the sanity of not only the characters, but the author as well. Gillian Flynn is absolutely brilliant. Her writing and story telling is fantastic and created a superb mystery/thriller. I highly recommend this book and would definitely say that you should read it before you see the movie because I don’t think it would create the same atmosphere and brilliance if you know what is to happen.
Gillian sure does know how to keep a reader intrigued. Even though I guessed the killer really early on in the book, I kept second guessing myself. I literally couldn't put it down.
So this was a really good book! It was a quick and easy read that kept me interested the whole book. I find sometimes thrillers/mysteries can get off to a really slow start but I was engaged from the beginning. I honestly went back and forth on who commited the crime right up until the very end when it's revealed and I gotta say, I did not see that coming. This book, including characters and atmosphere, was definately dark dark dark.
hmm..i guess more like a 3.5 but this really isn't my genre i think. like i liked it but its just not my genre. and also nothing happens in the middle 150 pages.
While most people know Gillian Flynn as the author of Gone Girl (which I read last year and thoroughly enjoyed), I am actually even more impressed by her debut, Sharp Objects. I chose this as my 'book that scares you' because I was told over and over how dark it was, and based on my experience with Gone Girl, I had no problem believing that.
There were moments of Sharp Objects that were indeed frightening. When the premise involves a mediocre journalist returning to her hometown to write about two girls who have been kidnapped, murdered, and their teeth pulled out, then it's bound to be a bit scary. And when your main character is covered in scars with a nefarious history, it is also pretty dark.
Camille Preaker is the daughter of a rich, southern pig farm owner -- the more-than-slightly psychotic Adora -- and left the tiny hole of Wind Gap behind years ago in favor of big city life in Chicago. When she returns to report the story, she is unsurprised to find most of her childhood friends, exes, enemies, and acquaintances are right where she left them -- just with more kids, tighter facelifts and bigger drinking problems.
Flynn captures this small-town return perfectly, in my experience. While I've never had such a negative experience going back to the 13,000-strong metropolis where I grew up, I have definitely experienced that eerie feeling of -- wow, everyone is still here.
Camille finally gets the chance to meet her half-sister Amma, the spitting image of her delicate mother and even more delicate stepfather, Alan (note, there are a plethora of A names in this book). For a thirteen-year-old, Amma exhibits shockingly bipolar behavior -- ranging from a sweet, innocuous angel in her mother's presence to a promiscuous, recreational-drug-swallowing mean girl everywhere else.
There is a lot to work with in this story and Flynn does so masterfully. You could chop raw potatoes with her sentences and the reader knows that each character has a fully developed history, even if you don't end up reading it. Everyone is just so real and their experiences are relatable.
Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.
Sharp Objects is about many things. It's about the desperation of small-town life, and the things bored people will do in attempts to just not be bored anymore. It's about what women are really capable of (a theme that is also highly present in Gone Girl) vs. what society imagines women are capable of. It's about loving someone so much that it becomes selfish. It's about competing for attention, about trying to fit in when all you're aware of is how much you stand out, and about challenging our preconceived notions of people we don't really know.
That's a lot of things, but Flynn tackles them all, and I would argue she does so incredibly well for a debut novelist. It helps that she was an experienced journalist when she started out, which means that she already had a firm grasp on her angle of the world.
This book is heavy and not for the faint of heart. The majority of the bad reviews I've read of it were from readers complaining it left them feeling 'yucky'. While I think it's a pretty immature way of describing a book that's so well written and does so much, I guess I can see where they're coming from. If you're not looking for a dark, psychological thriller then don't pick it up. But if you like suspense and are looking for more than just cheap thrills from the perspective of middle-aged male detectives, definitely give it a try. There's a lot of perspective waiting for you between the pages.
There were moments of Sharp Objects that were indeed frightening. When the premise involves a mediocre journalist returning to her hometown to write about two girls who have been kidnapped, murdered, and their teeth pulled out, then it's bound to be a bit scary. And when your main character is covered in scars with a nefarious history, it is also pretty dark.
Camille Preaker is the daughter of a rich, southern pig farm owner -- the more-than-slightly psychotic Adora -- and left the tiny hole of Wind Gap behind years ago in favor of big city life in Chicago. When she returns to report the story, she is unsurprised to find most of her childhood friends, exes, enemies, and acquaintances are right where she left them -- just with more kids, tighter facelifts and bigger drinking problems.
Flynn captures this small-town return perfectly, in my experience. While I've never had such a negative experience going back to the 13,000-strong metropolis where I grew up, I have definitely experienced that eerie feeling of -- wow, everyone is still here.
Camille finally gets the chance to meet her half-sister Amma, the spitting image of her delicate mother and even more delicate stepfather, Alan (note, there are a plethora of A names in this book). For a thirteen-year-old, Amma exhibits shockingly bipolar behavior -- ranging from a sweet, innocuous angel in her mother's presence to a promiscuous, recreational-drug-swallowing mean girl everywhere else.
There is a lot to work with in this story and Flynn does so masterfully. You could chop raw potatoes with her sentences and the reader knows that each character has a fully developed history, even if you don't end up reading it. Everyone is just so real and their experiences are relatable.
Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.
Sharp Objects is about many things. It's about the desperation of small-town life, and the things bored people will do in attempts to just not be bored anymore. It's about what women are really capable of (a theme that is also highly present in Gone Girl) vs. what society imagines women are capable of. It's about loving someone so much that it becomes selfish. It's about competing for attention, about trying to fit in when all you're aware of is how much you stand out, and about challenging our preconceived notions of people we don't really know.
That's a lot of things, but Flynn tackles them all, and I would argue she does so incredibly well for a debut novelist. It helps that she was an experienced journalist when she started out, which means that she already had a firm grasp on her angle of the world.
This book is heavy and not for the faint of heart. The majority of the bad reviews I've read of it were from readers complaining it left them feeling 'yucky'. While I think it's a pretty immature way of describing a book that's so well written and does so much, I guess I can see where they're coming from. If you're not looking for a dark, psychological thriller then don't pick it up. But if you like suspense and are looking for more than just cheap thrills from the perspective of middle-aged male detectives, definitely give it a try. There's a lot of perspective waiting for you between the pages.
Amy Elliot Dunne has disappeared. Every shred of evidence points to her husband Nick. The problem? He didn’t do it. Or did he?
This book has two unreliable narrators leading you all over the place and I have so many feelings about this novel. I feel like I’ve been pushed off a building, drawn and quartered, then run over by a steamroller for good measure. Good God, y’all.
The difference between New York City and Missouri in this book is like the difference between happiness and fear. Gillian Flynn uses the world to show the break in Nick and Amy’s relationship. While the world is great and real and well-written, it’s the characters that will really mess with your mind. Nick and Amy tell the story, and it would be just as insane anywhere.
You can’t like either Amy or Nick. You just can’t. You’re being led in circles to hate them both. They are so well written. they are very complicated characters. The book is practically a character study, peeling them back one layer at a time until we see the core. Or we think we see the core.
There is not a single character in this book who is likable. But they are all very interesting. They are flawed and shallow, they wear their truths on their sleeves and it makes the story that much more interesting.
I really couldn’t put this book down. At about 50%, I was getting bored, then hit the first major twist and it absolutely took off from there. I kept waiting for things to go the way I wanted them to… and they didn’t! Not at all! I leave this book with a general feeling of rage.
It was such an excellent, dark, twisted book. I will absolutely read more by Gillian Flynn.
This book has two unreliable narrators leading you all over the place and I have so many feelings about this novel. I feel like I’ve been pushed off a building, drawn and quartered, then run over by a steamroller for good measure. Good God, y’all.
The difference between New York City and Missouri in this book is like the difference between happiness and fear. Gillian Flynn uses the world to show the break in Nick and Amy’s relationship. While the world is great and real and well-written, it’s the characters that will really mess with your mind. Nick and Amy tell the story, and it would be just as insane anywhere.
You can’t like either Amy or Nick. You just can’t. You’re being led in circles to hate them both. They are so well written. they are very complicated characters. The book is practically a character study, peeling them back one layer at a time until we see the core. Or we think we see the core.
There is not a single character in this book who is likable. But they are all very interesting. They are flawed and shallow, they wear their truths on their sleeves and it makes the story that much more interesting.
I really couldn’t put this book down. At about 50%, I was getting bored, then hit the first major twist and it absolutely took off from there. I kept waiting for things to go the way I wanted them to… and they didn’t! Not at all! I leave this book with a general feeling of rage.
It was such an excellent, dark, twisted book. I will absolutely read more by Gillian Flynn.
This book was fucking crazy, in mostly a bad way.
I didn't find thrilling in the least and honestly couldn't wait to finish it.
I didn't find thrilling in the least and honestly couldn't wait to finish it.
It was with great trepidation that I started reading Gone Girl. I have had a bad run recently with really not enjoying books that everyone else loves (All That I Am, I’m looking at you) or just hating the recent books from my previously favourite authors (Sweet Tooth, why did you have to suck so much?). It seemed like everyone whose literary opinion I respect was raving about Gone Girl and, if I’d hated it, I would seriously have considered giving up contemporary fiction in its entirety and just read classic literature for the rest of my life.
Fear not, booksellers, because after finishing Gone Girl in one long sitting, I am back in the contemporary literature fold. The book opens on Amy and Nick Dunne’s fifth anniversary. She is making in crepes for breakfast and the hatred and unhappiness in their marriage is clear from the outset. We know they loved each other once but now that love has been replaced by something else. It’s bad, but what exactly is it? By the end of the day Amy has vanished and Nick is involved in a missing person’s case that quickly develops into a possible homicide.
The book alternates chapters from Nick and Amy’s point of views and one of the things it does really well is use this alternation to play with the reader’s sympathy and identification. This book has been accused of being both misogynist and misandrist but in my view is neither. The discomfort that leads to these accusations comes from the allegiances the text draws with each character and then rapidly undermines. Is Nick a horrible man and husband who neglects and doesn’t appreciate his brilliant, beautiful bride or a victim? Is Amy horrible unappreciated and taken advantage of or a manipulative genius? Admittedly as the book gets closer to the end it does veer on the border of unrealism and excess but by the time I reached that point I was enjoying the ride so much that I didn’t care.
Much has been written about the twists and turns of Gone Girl. I don’t think any of it is particularly twisty or unpredictable but it is very enjoyable and lots of fun to read. Thanks to this book, my faith in contemporary fiction is restored and I can read new books again without apprehension. I give this book four stars.
Fear not, booksellers, because after finishing Gone Girl in one long sitting, I am back in the contemporary literature fold. The book opens on Amy and Nick Dunne’s fifth anniversary. She is making in crepes for breakfast and the hatred and unhappiness in their marriage is clear from the outset. We know they loved each other once but now that love has been replaced by something else. It’s bad, but what exactly is it? By the end of the day Amy has vanished and Nick is involved in a missing person’s case that quickly develops into a possible homicide.
The book alternates chapters from Nick and Amy’s point of views and one of the things it does really well is use this alternation to play with the reader’s sympathy and identification. This book has been accused of being both misogynist and misandrist but in my view is neither. The discomfort that leads to these accusations comes from the allegiances the text draws with each character and then rapidly undermines. Is Nick a horrible man and husband who neglects and doesn’t appreciate his brilliant, beautiful bride or a victim? Is Amy horrible unappreciated and taken advantage of or a manipulative genius? Admittedly as the book gets closer to the end it does veer on the border of unrealism and excess but by the time I reached that point I was enjoying the ride so much that I didn’t care.
Much has been written about the twists and turns of Gone Girl. I don’t think any of it is particularly twisty or unpredictable but it is very enjoyable and lots of fun to read. Thanks to this book, my faith in contemporary fiction is restored and I can read new books again without apprehension. I give this book four stars.
