Review: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Nick Dunne's wife is missing on the morning of their fifth anniversary. He has no idea what happened to her, but everyone is accusing him of murdering her. He knows that he's innocent. Nothing is adding up.
I wanted to pick this up because I love mysteries and thrillers, but also because I've wanted to read it since I got my Gillian Flynn box set about two years ago. The hype around this book has remained since the release of the movie, and I had also wanted to watch the movie because many of my friends had seen it.
Unfortunately, I'm sad to say that I didn't really enjoy this book. It put me into a massive slump, which wasn't ideal because I was in the middle of BookTubeAThon and was trying to read 22 books over summer. I was expecting more action and psychological thriller-esque content because the book is marketed as a psychological thriller that really messes with you. There was nothing about the plot that surprised me, and I found it hard to stay interested in the story because I really hated Nick and had figured out how the book was going to end.
The big plot twist that everyone was surprised by was a huge let-down for me. I had somehow figured it out even though I really shouldn't have. That kind of defeated the point of the entire book, and I felt like I was really struggling to get through the first half of the book, and then found the second half really boring.
The "unreliable narrator" angle and the pitch of the book being a psychological thriller didn't come through for me. I didn't see an unreliable narrator, and while I can imagine what was likely supposed to be the unreliable narrator, it felt like something else to me. I also didn't understand the psychological thriller pitch because the story wasn't remotely psychological or thrilling to me. Everything that was supposed to make the book great ended up falling really flat for me.
In the end, I found myself really disliking the book and not understanding the hype around it. Never did I find myself wanting to know what would happen next, nor did I really care when something did happen. I had to push myself to finish the book, and my biggest complaint is that it never grabbed my interest. I spent more time bored than anything else, and I'm sad to say that this was a huge disappointment for me.
Character(s):
I hate Nick with a huge passion. He's terrible and I found no redeeming qualities in him by the end of the book. Honestly, I think he deserves half the things that happened to him. He's truly terrible.
I know that I'm not really supposed to like Amy, and the truth is that I don't like her very much, but I like her more than I like Nick.
3 stars. I don't recommend this because I think it's pretty meh for a 400+ page book. It didn't impress me and failed to meet the expectations I had of it considering the hype. There are better books out there.
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