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Okay, here is the thing. I like dark and twisted stories. The twisted plotlines and authentically scarred characters pull me in and I am hooked. Gillian Flynn wrote such a story line very well in Sharp Objects. That story is messed up but beautiful all the same. Donna Tartt and Tana French are other authors that know how to write about those dark places in the human soul. But it isn't just darkness in these stories that I love, there is also intensely developed characters and character driven plot lines but the presence of a very smart and impressive plot as well. Gone Girl was on my list of books to buy for close to a year before it was released. There are very few authors who can do this genre well.

Gone Girl in the end is a decent read. It is completely unpredictable, it is dark and the characters are twisted. The story is told from the alternating point of view of a wife and husband. The story pulls you in and you think that you know what is happening, you think you know the characters and then BAM. Seriously BAM. I don't want to write more about the surprises and plot twists because it will rob readers of the experience. I thought the twists were amazing and well done. Though admittedly, I was mad at the first major plot surprise. I had to put the book (okay my kindle) down and walk away from the story for a short period of time. But in the end I realized that Flynn was brilliant. She made me buy in completely to a certain idea of what the couple and the story was about.

Issues of gender and economics are themes that Flynn touched on in Sharp Objects and she does that in Gone Girl as well. The main characters are without jobs, frustrated by the economy and have moved to a small dying midwest town. Concepts of what make a woman appealing and what is expected from a woman are consistently but subtly danced around in both Sharp Objects and Gone Girl. Family ties and relationships are unwound and what remains is not all that pretty.

In the end, though, the characters were too far down the unlikable path for my taste. They were not redeemable. I like my characters flawed and hurting, thank you very much. But to have nobody in the story be someone I can attach to? To have only the side characters be the sympathetic ones? That is a challenge for me. There are certain scenes and phrases that one of the characters will say when he/she is mad (trying to be vague here ....) to describe other characters. I felt it was just too shocking, that Flynn's goal may have been to push the boundaries and make readers uncomfortable just because rather than contributing to the storyline. Now vulgar doesn't usually bother me and it really didn't bother me here, I just thought it was too much.

So if you like dark, you like twisted and you enjoyed Flynn's other books then I suggest you read this. Flynn's works tend to be shorter than Tana French's and Donna Tartt's. They are definitely less involved and the characters, while rich in description, are not as complexly written.

I'll leave you with an excerpt that will not spoil the story for you, but demonstrate that while this may not be Flynn's best work it is still good and she has an amazing ability to make brilliant observations about human beings in our modern world:

"Being the cool girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she's hosting the world's biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2 ... hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry ...."

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