courtneyajw 's review for:

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

4.0

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I'm really tempted to give this five stars but I literally JUST finished it so I'm going to have to revisit this mini review in a few days. The painfully slow start is why I'm not going to give it 5 right now. After reading two Gillian Flynn novels, I'm comfortable with saying that the slow start and huge uptick in action is just her style. I can appreciate it but that doesn't make I have to enjoy it. From the halfway point to the end I never wanted to put it down.

This is the story of Libby Day - a girl who survives the massacre of her family. Everyone blames the brother Ben and as the youngest child she is also coerced into blaming him. She spends her life living on the money that she makes from being the single surviving member of her savagely murdered family. She's a bit dishonest and somewhat of a klepto. As we meet her, she's at the end of her money and being told her by financial advisor that she needs to get a job. The irony is that she's in the same position as her mother was before she was killed.

I really enjoyed that this book is really only possible because Libby was so young when the murders happened and it makes you think about the real life situations when very young children are asked to think like adults and then have to grow up and live with whatever happened as a consequence of that.

So throughout the book, Flynn does a great job of aligning the guilt and making it hard to figure out who did it until just before it's revealed.

Spoiler

Until the chapter where we learn about Diehl, I would have sworn that it was all Trey and Diondre. I assumed that Ben didn't do it but was there and witnessed it once he started hanging out with them.

I loved that Libby kind of slid into being interested in her own case simply because she was chasing money. The attitude of the kill clubs are also priceless. I'm going to Google around and see if those exist in real life - I'm sure they do. The ending was awesome although

Spoiler

I wondered why no one was concerned that Crystal might try to hunt down Libby... I guess if Diondre is already in jail what would be the point."

Great read. Definitely recommend.

Revisit (less than an hour later):

OK - I also have to say that the massive number of coincidences does make things a bit tough. Not so much with the night of murders - isn't that kind of how these things work? They only work if the stars align for them to work, right? But in the end,

Spoiler

the fact that Diehl gets caught just around the time that Libby's case is losing momentum kind of struck me as too fast and too clean. Diehl's role is believable but the timing is not. It's a bit too cut and dry. I appreciate that the police needed something to push them into believing her story. That seems true and believable - they would never just accept it and go hunting for Diondre on Libby's word alone.