Can't keep it to myself: Gone Girl

I know, could I be later to the party?  Fact is, I read Gillian Flynn's Dark Places a few years ago and it's still one that haunts me.  Her newest novel, Gone Girl, is most certainly going to be one I'll still be thinking about years from now, too.  I finally got my hands on a copy this past weekend, and I cleared my schedule as best I could to find some quality reading time. 

Wow.

Sharp, witty, and unflinchingly honest, while still maintaining plenty of tension that keeps the plot moving.  And yet, I read it intently, carefully, unwilling to move ahead too quickly for fear that I'd miss some vital clue.  Gone Girl is told in alternating chapters by Nick Dunne, who is anything but a perfect husband, and his wife Amy, in diary entries that span their relationship.  Their separate threads combine into a well-woven tale of a marriage fraught with idealism and failure, perfection and oblivion, excess and resentment.  This tale both begins and ends in Amy's disappearance on their fifth wedding anniversary, like a point of impact in which her story shows how the damage occurred, and Nick's encompasses the ensuing mess. 

The cops always look at the husband first in cases like this, and Nick certainly seems like he could have done it, evasive and bitter as he appears.  But did he?  And if he didn't, what happened to Amy?  What's in the gift box, confiscated from their home as evidence?  If he didn't do it, why so many lies?

I can say that this is by far one of the best thrillers I've read in the last year, and I highly recommend it.  I'd liken it, a bit, to thrillers by S.J. Watson and Chevy Stevens, if you're looking for something similar.

Happy reading!