Gone Girl

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh. My. God. This book. This book has officially broaden my definition of what a thriller is and should be...

GONE GIRL is about a couple who ends up manipulating each other, but I think it is more accurate to say that it is the writer who ends up manipulating the reader. Throughout the entire novel, Gillian Flynn succeeds in twisting your opinions until you're literally feeling feels and thinking thoughts that she wants you to have:

You feel sorry for Nick in the beginning (I mean, laid-off and his wife goes missing) while reading his chapters and you start to love Amy while you read her diary entries. Then, things start to get darker in her entries and you begin to look at Nick's actions and motivations with new suspicion. Then, *bam* she hits you with a twist that you definitely weren't expecting and, now, you feel sorry for Nick for having married a psycho like Amy. Right when you think that you're officially on Nick's side is when she introduces new elements that makes you wonder just who you should be rooting for in the first place.

To be honest, I didn't know how this book will read. When I think of thrillers, I think of Dan Brown or James Patterson with lots of actions and mysteries, not GONE GIRL. At least with those books, you know who the good guys are and you know (deep-down) that things are going to work out in favor for the protagonist.

In GONE GIRL, there's no death-defying, heart-pounding action scenes. In fact, most of the scenes that would have been used to normally entice thriller readers (killing your captive, the actual act of running away, etc.) are told/implied instead of being shown to the readers.

I loved the ending too! Unlike traditional thrillers (where you know the adventure/story ended unless there's a cliffhanger for the next book), her ending definitely led the door open to possibilities because this is a married couple's life that we're talking about.
Despite the fact that it was nothing like the thrillers I am used to reading, it kept me flipping the pages because of her impeccable pacing and also extremely psychotic characters. I will definitely be reading her other books!

View all my reviews