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2.5 � Daaaaamn. First words I uttered after scrambling in an antsy search for the remaining pages that weren’t there. That did not necessarily indicate reception to a good ending, relatively speaking. The book was as underwhelming as the reviews I’ve gleaned over in between the length of it. I did find an eerie sort of rooting for the antihero or whatever role Amy was supposed to be playing as it was written. Underwhelming, that’s a sharp word to describe a highly-acclaimed novel that birthed a film parallel to it in plaudits. For a supposedly modern classic thriller, it had been underwhelming but nevertheless creditable in prose and substantial plot.

It wasn’t difficult to read either, in terms of tediousness or a plot that could have been plodding. It’s more like a ludicrous premise stretched out to 167k words with lasciviousness and as much twisted persona one can wring out from upper class sociopaths. Sometimes books reveal who you are and where your morals are pointed towards, much less the ways characters were portrayed. Amy and Nick, for the most part, were some of the two least sympathetic characters in recent novels. Throughout, it felt like they both somehow deserved their fates. The nuances impressed upon their nature were merely accessories to the people they were shaped to become. In an irate, feminist stance, there wasn’t nearly enough sediment to poke through on Nick over the parallels he shared with his father, then, just like that, his father’s gone—an anti-climactic non-closure to a book supposedly brimming with psychoanalytic nerve endings.

“But he said, ‘Because I feel sorry for you.�
‘W³ó²â?â€�
‘Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.�

Still, despite the small chill those words gave me as it slinked down my spine, it was still overall underwhelming. I waited for the big reveal, the depravity of it all, but instead I got a throwaway ‘twist� and some more childish bickering between a boringly white couple. That’s what I get for reading too much news clippings online of suburbia horror; fiction can never measure up to reality. I was aching to read more of Flynn’s novels after flossing over tidbits of reviews of people clutching their pearls, “wondering ~what the fuck~ have they just read�. Maybe in a bit. I’m shockingly illiterate myself. I need to get my head out of my ass and fingers dip out of shallower waters of fiction.