Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - Sharp Objects

Read for the Read the States Challenge for: Missouri!

I'm not going to bother with a content warning list for this book because it's not worth your time or mine. If you struggle with reading about themes of suicide or self-harm, this is not the book for you.
Because it's such a quick read, I'm not really going to bother to break it down. But the writing is so, so damn good - honestly, just go read it!

I read this book in one day for a Read-a-Thon and it was absolutely worth my entire day. I tend to stay away from thrillers in general, but Gillian Flynn is an author I will continue to actively seek out. This is the second book I've read of hers and it's just as good.

Content Warnings

princessgonchar's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

This flip-flopped back and forth for me between being painfully unsurprising and insufferably confusing all while being such a slow crawl to the end for being under 300 pages.

I'll start with painfully unsurprising. Granted, this was published in 2006, but this idea of

crazy mother who wants to take care of her kids so she makes them sick

feels so overplayed at this point, and it was clear that that was happening from the beginning. Also

Amma was a bitch the whole time and it was obvious that Adora couldn't poison the kids who weren't hers

. Like I just wanted an ounce of surprise.

The problem is that there was some surprise, but it came in the form of total nonsense. Like why in the world would

Camille sleep with John????

. It came out of literally no where, and I think there was supposed to be something endearing about the reading of the scars, but it all just felt so contrived and weird. Almost nothing Camille did at the end of the book made sense to me. And there were a significant amount of times were I was just like "why??? why is this happening????".

Also, I unequivocally hated every single character in this book. I want to make it clear that I didn't not like this book/its characters because it/they felt overly dark or it/they wasn't feminist enough. I mean the book is about child murder, it's going to be dark (and tbh nothing bothered me too much except for the

incessant eyelash picking, but I have a weird thing about eyes, so

), and if you're reading thrillers for the feminist theory, then I think there are more problems at hand.

That being said: Camille wasn't endearing or even remotely sympathetic, there was literally no reason why she should have gone back to Missouri or why she stayed. I don't think the journalism thing was convincing enough. Richard sucked, her family sucked harder, and there was literally not a single character that made me go "well, at least they're in this scene." It was a constant battle of the characters to see who ended up my least favorite. And I hate to say it, but it might have been Camille.

I gave it two stars instead of one because I do genuinely think Gillian Flynn is good at writing. The voice in the novel was really good, and I liked a lot of the descriptions (even if it slowed things down a bit). Also, the reveal at the end with the

teeth in the dollhouse was really well done, even if Amma was clearly the murderer the whole time

.

This was such a disappointment for me.

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