Gone Girl

Gone Girl is the first of Gillian Flynn's novels that I read. I finished it in about a day and promptly ran out to the library to pick up Flynn's other two works, Sharp Objects and Dark Places. This book was so fantastically captivating - I couldn't get enough!

Gone Girl is the story of Nick and Amy Dunne and their marriage that went so completely wrong. On the day of their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy disappears from their home with what appears to be a struggle. With the police boring down on him, Nick is searching frantically through the diary that Amy left behind and for any clue that will lead him to the truth about what happened to his wife. Few people in town believe he had nothing to do with it and Nick is under constant scrutiny.

While Nick is home facing the police, we find that Amy is alive and well, having so far gotten away with her well-plotted escape plan. I went back and forth with so many emotions while reading this book, torn between sympathy for Nick for being put in this situation to a little bit of admiration for Amy for being so brilliantly conniving as to even come up with an extraordinarily manipulative plan. The two of them together are stealthy masterminds and my excitement was kept high throughout the entire book.

The ending was definitely the most controversial part of the book. I feel as if you either love it or hate it. I fell more into the category of hating the ending, but at the same time, I hated it with deep admiration for the author. Not every story needs to be neatly tied up in a bow to please all the readers. Flynn has no trouble executing a much more realistically gritty ending. My "hate" for the ending comes more from frustration that people can get away with such atrocious behavior and go on with their life as a puppet master. However, this certainly did not deter me from immediately picking up Flynn's two previously written novels and devouring them just as quickly.

If you like Gone Girl, check out another of Gillian Flynn's novels - Dark Places