Gillian Flynn is best known for her bestseller novel that was made into a movie. Of course, I am talking about Gone Girl, a.k.a. the book that every single psychological thriller is compared to. While Gone Girl was a great book that broke the literary world, I was much more fascinated by Sharp Objects.
It makes zero sense to me that the ratings on Goodreads for Sharp Objects is 3.97. Since over 600,000 people participated in the ratings, I guess it makes sense that only 40% gave it a 4 and 30% a 5. Personally, I would give it a 6 if I could. But let’s not get ahead of myself, here’s what the book is about:
“Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.”
Goodreads
Just like Good Girls broke the literary world, Sharp Objects broke me – for two days, which is all it took for me to binge read it. I’m the type of person to go to bed at 9 PM to wake up early to write before I need to go to work. This book had me staying up late and waking up even earlier to read. My lunch break was also spent reading this and it even came with me to the bathroom.
It surprised me that I was so hungry for this story, since I didn’t have much in common with the protagonist or her back story. I won’t give anything away, but there is something really bizarre about her that few if no people at all can relate to. It was tough to even picture her in real life, but that was part of my fascination with the story.
Like any phycological thrillers, twists were expected. This book, however, had more twists than I could possible imagine. That was one of the things that made it so hard to put down. “Just one more chapter,” I would say to myself and then it would end in a way that simply didn’t let me put it down. Darn you, Gillian Flynn, you owe me several hours of sleep.
I felt addicted to this book from start to finish. It was amazing and dark with a satisfying ending. I recommend it to anyone who likes psychological thrillers. It made me itching to read the rest of Flynn’s books. Of which, unfortunately, there are not too many!
Part of me is frustrated and wants Flynn to churn out books at the rate of Stephen King. Another part of me understands that it takes time to produce books this good and if she rushed, they wouldn’t be the same. If you haven’t read anything by Gillian Flynn yet, I guess Sharp Objects would be a good place to start. Although most people start with Gone Girl.
Whichever book you begin with, I’m quite confident that you will end up reading them all eventually. Leave a comment below if you agree and want to nerd out over Flynn with me. Alternatively, if you’re one of the people who somehow hates her, tell us why and we’ll try not to think you’re crazy!
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Great post 😁