Gone Girl

A story of someone going missing is always something that affects me viscerally. I was drawn into the intrigue of a woman who is apparently happily married one minute, and then blood stains are found on the floor of the couple’s kitchen the next.

I loved this book because it was a who-dun-it with great descriptive scenes. It was well-written and left me hungry for it when I was forced to put it down to do my chores. A taut, gripping saga about real-life people in real settings is always something I find fascinating.

To say I love this book is to say I love torture, which may not be accurate. It’s better to say it burrowed into my brain and stayed there for far too long. I don’t get scared easily. But this novel caught me differently.

This one freaked me out on a level I’d never experienced before. Why? Because it’s the kind of story that could happen to anyone, especially to dingbats like me. And make no mistake: Nick, the “hero” of this story, is a complete dingbat. I mean, he’s smart. But he makes so many believably bad decisions in… show more.

This book is a smart pop culture thriller. I’ve read it twice to examine how Gillian Flynn crafts her suspenseful-filled sequences.

What I enjoyed most about this book was how unpredictable it was. I find it very rare for a thriller to be so well-written and believable. Amy, the protagonist, is so incredibly cunning, always one step ahead of Nick and the reader

Many years ago, when I was sharing several chapters of my book with my then-writing group, I faced harsh criticism from some of its members, mainly due to my protagonist, Trickster.

They found her too violent, too cunning, and without remorse. I read in many of Flynn’s interviews that she had also received a lot of criticism for her vicious main character. Certain readers believed the murderous, unrepenting heroine of this book was a shame to womanhood.

In defense of my violent heroine Trickster, I quoted Flynn’s response to her critics: the notion that women are inherently good and nurturing… show more.

I don’t think any top 5 thrillers list would be complete without a Gillian Flynn title. In all her books, I love how Flynn combines twisty, edge-of-your-seat plotting with deep psychological observations about her characters, but I think Gone Girl does this the best.

I was shocked by the big reveal on a first read, but that’s only one of many pleasures I keep finding in this novel as I return to it repeatedly. Nick and Amy are the ultimate dysfunctional couple and, in many ways, completely unlikable characters–yet I secretly love them both!

This book really set the bar for me in terms of psych thrillers. It has an ingenious plot and is one of the first genuinely shocking ‘Twist you don’t see coming’ books.

This book is so well-crafted, deliciously dark and manipulating, and, of course, so well-written. I was invested in both the main characters and constantly changed my mind about who I was routing for and what the truth really was. Bravo! 

First, I found the writing in this book phenomenal, especially the dialogue. I feel like each bit of dialogue revealed something new about the character or pulled me deeper into the plot. It’s witty and dark. Honest would be a good word to describe it.

The characters felt so human to me–simultaneously loveable and deplorable, true to human nature. But it was the twist midway through the novel that really drew me in—the shift in reality. It changed the book for me, molding it into something unique, something I’d never read before.

It’s a novel I come back to time… show more.

I loved reading this book like millions of others who made it such a blockbuster, best-selling book.

Many people assume this book was based on the sensational real-life case of missing Laci Peterson and her husband Scott (later convicted of murder.) Author Gillian Flynn–although agreeing there were parallels between the two stories has said her gripping, page-turning fictional novel about a cheating husband and a missing wife was not directly drawn from the Peterson story.

But she was still clearly inspired by that and other high-profile media cases like this that she covered as a journalist before becoming a crime… show more.

Yes, of course this is now a classic thriller. Still, I have to recommend it here because I love Gillian Flynn's writing style and how she structured her twists. Especially through the diary entries, you get very close to the main characters, and I could really empathize with everything. 

I was drawn deeper into the story and really wanted to solve the mystery of what happened to the wife. Then, it shocked me.

This book spoke to me on so many levels.

A failing marriage is dramatic enough, but the death of the spouse you’re no longer in love with? That amps things up. What about being blamed for it? Ratcheted higher still. Every time I thought I’d found the end of the drama, the author threw in a new twist.

This story was delightfully perverse (if there is such a thing), and when I read the end, I literally gasped—and it takes a lot to get that kind of reaction from me. This is “dysfunction” on steroids.