Sharp Objects

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disturbing is the first word that comes to mind with this novel. It’s dark, much darker than Gone Girl and that one is already pretty twisted. Flynn puts the fun in dysfunctional. Whether she writing about a marriage or family relationships, they are all pretty messed up, but you also can’t look away from the train wreck that is her characters’ lives.

Camille is a Chicago reporter sent back to her small hometown in Missouri to cover the death of two young girls and the search for the serial killer behind their murders. Her mother, Adora, is a proper southern belle with a perverse view of how a mother should treat her children. Her husband is little more than a mannequin, present but never part of the action. Camille’s half-sister Amma is a 13-year-old enigma, prancing around in pigtails and then turning into a textbook mean girl the second she leaves the house

Preaker comes back to the small town where she grew up to report on a double murder there for the Chicago newspaper she works for. It seems everything she does involves alcohol. She drinks so much that it is unbelievable she can accomplish her investigative reporting duties. But investigate she does, always one step behind her policeman friend, Richard. And boy does she drink all the while!

But the drinking isn't as bad as the cutting, I guess.

While visiting her home town, Preaker stays with her mother, stepfather, and 13-year-old half sister. Here lies SHARP OBJECT's greatest mystery. It is Flynn's trick to make you feel undecided about these people throughout the book. Although it's easy to see they're dysfunctional, you won't know their true selves until the end. Please don't let any other book review tell you more about them and spoil that for you.



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