Author: Gillian Flynn
First Published: May 2012
Publisher: Crown
467 pages (eBook)
(As a warning, due to the nature of this mystery/thriller novel, this review has some slight spoilers. The first 3 paragraphs are spoiler free but after that it was hard to reflect on this book without revealing anything.)
I walked into this book knowing very little about what it’s about. It sounded sort of a like a murder mystery to me, which I don’t typically read (for no real reason; just not my thing), but Gone Girl is the October book of my friends’ book club so I cracked it open anyway. I ended up really liking this book a lot, and am completely blown away by the way the story developed. I loved how I couldn’t see any of it coming, and as the story progressed, I was more and more shocked.
Gone Girl is about a married couple in their mid-to-late thirties, Nick and Amy Dunne. They have been having a very rocky marriage for the past few years, and just when it seems like things can’t get even worse, Amy disappears. Amy is gone without a trace and no one has any idea where she has gone. This missing persons case quickly escalates to a possible homicide when the police begin gathering evidence that points to Nick as the culprit, the murderer. Nick is flabbergasted that anyone would think he murdered his own wife and asserts over and over again that he is innocent.
That is the basic beginning of this gripping thriller, and all I can reveal without giving away the spoiler bits. As the story progresses, the author throws plot twist after plot twist. While none of the characters were particularly likeable characters, I did find my allegiance flipping back and forth between Nick and Amy. Who’s really the “bad guy” here?! I love how the author (or characters) plays with the reader’s mind, psychologically. This is a rather unpredictable story, and I loved that about it.
The story starts off pretty realistically, in my opinion. It was interesting reading about Nick and Amy, two characters who come off as relatively normal at first. They have their quirks and are experiencing ups and downs in their relationship, not perfect people, but believable. You think, “This married couple can be any ol’ married couple.” As the story continues, Amy’s true personality came to light and I was very shocked at how quickly it escalated. To put it bluntly, I think she’s a psycho. At the end, I felt even Nick has gone a little loopy with what I think was a poor decision on his part. They both try to rationalize their thinking but I didn’t buy it — I just thought they both went insane. Or they always were and I never noticed till then. Overall, I liked the way the characters were written, but I feel like Nick veered off the path a little at the end. Amy makes sense, I suppose, even though it was shocking to go from normal to psycho so fast.
As for the ending, I think that was the most disappointing part of the story. For a story that did a great job building tension and intensity throughout the story, the ending was surprisingly flat and anticlimatic. I remember thinking, “That’s it? That’s what they decided to do at the end?!” I felt so unsatisfied with the ending. Perhaps the intention is to say marriage can sometimes be two people pretending to love another and going through the motions. I do feel like the ending had some sort of “message”. However, I just didn’t like it at all, it didn’t sit right with me, which is a shame because I liked so much of the book until the end. Perhaps it was just my sense of justice poking through as I felt neither character experienced much of a consequence from the events (well … except Nick, I guess, though he really chickened out in the end). I don’t know, I just wasn’t feeling the ending.
My Rating: 4/5
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