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Mr. Peanut
The Seducer/The Conqueror/The Discoverer
Threats

and now this.

all of them are amazing stories about a wife gone missing or murdered, and the husband's journey through grief and suspicion with a bevvy of unreliable narrators. i'm actually not some sicko who is drawn to stories of murdered women, but these happen to be exceptional books that are strikingly similar in the way they unspool, and - yeah - they all have the same central action.

every single one of them is a twisty-turny narrative that keeps the reader guessing until some sort of explosively wonderful ending ties up everything and you are all "ahhhhh". every character is unreliable, every clue is a possible red herring. every story will happily frustrate you with how slowly it doles out its answers.

i was so super-psyched to read this one, and from the very beginning, i was hooked.

when nick dunne's wife amy goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary, the suspicion eventually comes to rest on him. the story is broken up into two threads: nick's version of events after her abduction, and amy's diary over the past few years. you will see how people in intimate relationships can sometimes have wildly different interpretations of events, a very specific internal set of values and goals in a relationship, and oh so many secrets.

and then...a bit of a twist, which even though it was something i had suspected a little bit, was handled in a way that exceeded every expectation. and i was like "yeah, yeah, yeah!!!!" and this twist just made everything so much cooler, and i could not even pause in my reading, and i wanted to turn to the end so many times to see how this puppy played itself out, but i resisted, and stayed up wayyyy past my bedtime to finish it.

and then there was an ending

i know a lot of people have difficulties with the ending. but i thought it was great.

this is very much a spoiler, so if you are ever going to read this (and you totally should because it is incredibly gripping and it is a truly great read) don't click this little button, go do something else, please.

(view spoiler)[ come on - what's not to love about this ending? we have one character who has said time and again that he has this need to please people, to give them what they want; who lost his way with amy when he stopped giving her what she wanted. and the other character who is accustomed to being worshipped, who has no problems destroying lives when she gets bored or when the attention-train stops. so who better to be in a relationship?? in a relationship, it is wayyy better to be feared than to be loved, right? right?? for this book, it definitely is. this is an astonishing dissection of a terrifying relationship, and the future these two are going to have together, left to my imagination, is ohmygod horrifying. and this line?? hell, at this point, i can't imagine my story without amy. she is my forever antagonist. we are one long frightening climax. AAAAAAHHHHH!! love. love. love. (hide spoiler)]

i think the ending is perfect. perfectly chilling, perfectly mindfucking, perfectly hopelessly tragically perfect.

perfect.