Wednesday, July 23, 2014

There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold


I need to write a post about a book. Except I don’t have internet at the moment* and can’t remember the next book I’m supposed to review because I am terrible at staying on top of these things. Go me.

Alright, I haven’t figured out the internet but I did manage to figure out which was the last book I read. Because I pulled it up on my phone. It’s really sad how dependent on the interwebs I am. Anyway.

I finally read Gone Girl. I’m not really sure what I should say about it, considering most everyone has already read this one and knows the twist and blah blah blah. But not knowing what to say has never stopped me from talking before so why should it make a difference now?

By now I’m sure you’ve heard the basics of the story. Nick and Amy had a seemingly perfect marriage but when Amy goes missing things start to fall apart with that facade. Is Nick responsible for Amy’s disappearance? Is there something else going on?

Obviously as I mentioned above, and as you probably already know, there’s a twist. Had I not known there was a twist I’m sure things would have come as more of a surprise. As it was I was waiting for something to happen and when it did, I can’t say I predicted it exactly but at the same point I wasn’t really surprised by it. Which was fine. Knowing it didn’t really ruin anything for me. I’m not sure what my reaction would have been had I not known something was coming.

I also heard about how everyone haaaaaaaaaated all of the characters. And they are not wrong. Everyone is just the worst. That again didn't really bother me. I didn’t like the characters. I don’t want to spend any time with them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to read about them. I think knowing this already meant I wasn’t expecting to like them, therefore wasn’t disappointed when they turned out to be terrible, and could just focus on the story instead of being pissed at these dipshits.

For the most part I liked the book. It was definitely a page-turner, so I’d say it was doing its job. And there were moments where the writing was great or Flynn made some great points. (I love the "cool girl" rant.) I wanted to see what was going to happen, what was really going on, what the hell does that comment/clue/look mean, etc. Everything a good thriller should do. The ending though…I was not crazy about the ending. Which I suppose bodes well for the movie given Flynn’s changing it for the movie. Maybe if I had read it before all the hype I would have liked it better. Overall it was a good thriller that probably doesn’t deserve all of the praise or hatred that’s been heaped on it.

Gif rating

*"At the moment" meaning at the time of writing. Which was actually quite a few days ago at this point.

Title quote from somewhere, except I wrote this post while on vacation and the book was back at home, so I searched for quotes from the book and I like this one, but Goodreads doesn't list what page the quote is from (because everyone has different versions anyway) so yeah. I'm doing so well right now.

Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl. Crown Publishing, 2012.