Gone Girl: Gillian Flynn

There are two sides to every story...

As my regular readers will know my review posts are on the whole about young adult fiction. However, I treated myself to a few Kindle 99p treats and one of those was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

I am a big crime/murder mystery fan. I enjoy the slowly building suspense and trying to figure out what is going on before I get to the end.  Second guessing the author Flynn however, was harder than most crime novels. She really took me by surprise with the direction this story went. I spent the whole time I was reading it changing my mind about what on earth was going to happen. Flynn's writing style is very clever and predictive.

From the start Flynn manages to set the main male character, Nick up as a bad guy. I was filled with suspicion about him and listening to his wife Amy talk in her diary entries did nothing to eliminate this suspicion. Without giving too much away Flynn throws a serious spanner in the works that literally had me completely confused with how this story would conclude. The story is told in the first person point of view of both Nick and Amy and the chapters move between the two effortlessly.  The two characters are so complex but well written that you really get a sense of the two of them. Having said that I found neither of them particularly likable and I don't think I was really rooting for either character. I still can't decide if their personalities really exists in the general public, I certainly haven't met anyone like them (thankfully) that's for sure.

This is definitely a page turner, I found myself really hurrying towards the end. Sadly I was disappointed when I got there.  I felt the end lacked the intensity of the rest of the story. It felt really disconnected for me and completely obscure. I just couldn't get my head around the conclusion, it felt totally crazy but I wonder if that is what Flynn wanted to reflect the characters behaviour which was pretty crazy throughout the story.

This is most certainly NOT a book for young adults and is definitely for those who don't mind reasonably adult themes. However, for a crime story this is not particularly gruesome so is for those who enjoy suspense without the gore.  I may be willing to give some more of Flynn's books a go but I do hope the endings are better then this one.

Climatic build to a disappointing end