Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
(possible spoilers)
Ok, let me be honest...This book was VERY hard for me to get interested in...and then as I was just about to give up on it...It gets interesting and sucks me right in.
My Run Down of the Book
(Sorry if it's quick and I leave out details...READ THE BOOK! :))
It's a book that is back and forth between the two main characters; Nick and Amy Dunne, each giving their point of view (which I found pretty interesting but eh...). The book starts off with Nick talking about the couple moving from their New York home to his hometown in Missouri. The reason? Both characters have lost their job in New York aaaand Nick's mother is sick. Nick was a writer and Amy wrote quizzes for magazines. Amy was rich because of books her parents published, "loosely" on her life. When they move to Missouri, she ends up spending the rest of her fortune to buy Nick a bar, which he names, "The Bar" and she stays at home, both are now poor..ish....
Fast forward a few chapters; Amy goes missing, presumably kidnapped, on their 5th anniversary. The book follows both characters as Nick, uninterested, goes searching for his wife and she writes diary entries of her life. He shows little to no emotion that she is missing other than when he is following her treasure hunt (which she leaves for him every year on their anniversary) and she continues to describe their oh so perfect life in her diary entries.
(Sorry to have hurried through those descriptions...It was a bore to read, trust me..)
Fast forward again; HERE is where this book caught my attention. Nick...is a cheater. He has a mistress! (FINALLY, it gets juicy) The diary entries of Amy's also get a little negative. Nick basically rapes Amy, he doesn't care, he's becoming unattached...basically being a horrible husband and Amy is always the good guy. Nick becomes the prime suspect in Amy's kidnapping and possible murder. Things just don't add up to the police..mopped up blood in the kitchen, an ottoman overturned that shouldn't have ever flipped, pictures that should've fallen still standing, Nick being in all of the places that Amy's belongings are being found in (because her treasure hunt is leading him to these places)..All the evidence starts pointing to him.
Twist I wasn't expecting: Amy was not kidnapped. She is in the middle of no where, in a cabin by the lake...Changed her look, saved money over the years...Jumped ship. You start finding out how evil Amy Dunne truly is. People she said were stalkers, weren't..People she said hurt her, didn't..She is a crazy psycho that did all the stuff to herself! All throughout the book you are reading her innocent diary entries (which by the way, were all made up, just for this plan)..You find out that she is the one who cut herself to have blood in the kitchen..She is the one who makes the crime scene look botched and spurious..She leads Nick to all the places the police find belongings of hers through her treasure hunt... You find out just how twisted she is.
She calls one of her ex's, Desi, to "save" her. She needs another place to hide out (she was robbed at her cabin)... He provides and basically....well...traps her in his lake house. He leaves her there with no way out, no money...nothing. (Good, she deserves it) All the while Nick is getting ready to be incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit. He figures out half way through the book that she is the one framing him. Only he can't prove it because...well, there's no Amy..she's still kidnapped. So he starts going on to talk shows...blogs..anything to catch her attention if she happens to be watching. Pleading for her to come back.........Two can defiantly play this game!
It works!
She shows up on his doorstep....She has killed Desi, lied to everyone about it being him the one that kidnapped her and kept her hostage and she fought him, killed him, and came home.
There's so much tension between Nick and Amy at the end that you can feel it! He is going to out her for everything she has done; she is writing a book on her horrid experience...all the while still threatening to frame Nick for abuse he has never commit to keep him there.
The ending that I absolutely hated: She ends up pregnant, makes Nick claim that most of what the police suspected was true (his credit card debt, the abuse towards Amy..etc) and he gets to keep the baby...and her. HE DOES IT! They live miserably together forever...I guess...
Back to Me:
I really liked Amy and I hate the way her character turned out. She definitely has me wondering about the people around me! Someone that can seem so normal but be so truly disturbed...It's frightening.
The book in itself was such a let down in the beginning and ending.. I was so hoping that Nick would get together some kind of evidence to prove Amy's involvement in everything! I was hoping he would release a book about the experience and get her sent straight to jail. I wanted more people to stick up for him and believe him. I had my doubts there for a while that he actually did kill Amy... I wanted him to be a good guy for once in the book though!
I hated how the ending left you sitting there like, "WHAT?! THAT'S how you are ending this?!" I want to know more! I want to know if Amy and Nick end up killing each other? Do they live this lie of "love" forever? Does their child turn out normal? Is Nick really secretly collecting evidence against Amy? Is she EVER going to get caught? I need to know more! I am really hoping that Gillian Flynn releases a sequel to this book.
But all in all, this was a good book. Something that was easily put to the side though...until you got about half way through. I would recommend this book however! It was full of twists and turns that you'll never see coming!
Happy Reading!
-Z
