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A review by constancepoplos
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? No
3.0
Ok I listened to this in audiobook format and honestly I’m not sure I would’ve kept going if I was physically reading.
Let’s start with what I enjoyed. Flynn is clearly good at what she does. She got multiple visceral reactions out of me because of her descriptive writing. She’s also great at writing unlikeable characters.
Now for what I didn’t love. Multiple parts of the story felt unnecessary (eg descriptions of Ben and Chrissy together, in depth explanations of what occurred on the night of the murders) to the point that I almost dnf-ed the book. But I pushed through out of curiosity. I also thought the story was slightly predictable. I don’t even read a whole lot of this genre and was able to guess most of the true story of the murders.
I think to listen to this book would be a good road trip activity but otherwise I wouldn’t necessarily recommend.
Let’s start with what I enjoyed. Flynn is clearly good at what she does. She got multiple visceral reactions out of me because of her descriptive writing. She’s also great at writing unlikeable characters.
Now for what I didn’t love. Multiple parts of the story felt unnecessary (eg descriptions of Ben and Chrissy together, in depth explanations of what occurred on the night of the murders) to the point that I almost dnf-ed the book. But I pushed through out of curiosity. I also thought the story was slightly predictable. I don’t even read a whole lot of this genre and was able to guess most of the true story of the murders.
I think to listen to this book would be a good road trip activity but otherwise I wouldn’t necessarily recommend.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Drug use, Gun violence, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Graphic descriptions of blood; murders by gun, axe, and strangulation. More minor but still significant descriptions of sexual acts, some scenes involving a minor. Teen pregnancy with mentions of abortion.