Review: Gone Girl

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I was torn between 4 and 5 stars- which is super unusual for me, but after review my other 5 star choices it just didn't have that extra thing to push it over.

I greatly enjoyed this book, was appalled by it, confused by it and angry at it. There are two narrators husband and wife Amy and Nick, switching POV every other chapter. Nick is the first narrator we hear from his story starts with the day of his and Amy's 5 year anniversary where she goes missing. Then we hear from Amy, a diary entry from 7 years earlier about her first meeting with Nick, her impressions and excitement about their relationship. The book continues this way until Amy's diary story catches up with Nick's initial starting point on the day she goes missing. Along the way they both lie becoming unreliable narrators, leaving the reader not knowing who to believe.

At the beginning you believe Nick is a good guy, maybe a little neglectful but a good husbad and he couldn't have had anything to do with his wife being missing. Then he does something that makes us loose faith in him, chapters into the story we learn he's cheating on Amy for over a year! This makes him seem much more a likely candidate to have killed his wife. Amy's diary entries make her seem like the Ultimate Cool Girl, but then we find out she completely faked her abduction and murder to get back at Nick and we learn that she is a sociopath and scary as hell. The final part of the book is a crazy story of mind games upon mind games between Nick and Amy.

The ending was nothing what I would have expected 200 pages in, but it was so fitting for what happened, but I cannot remember a book that played on my emotions for a character so much. I like that it came around full circle, cause I initially wanted to be on Nick's side and luckily I ended on his side as well, but it's amazing the author was able to make me constantly judge how I really felt about these characters and what they were doing to one another. There's one quote that completely gives me chills now, but also very nicely sums up both character's motivation and fears.

The question I've asked more often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I supposed these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking how are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?

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