Paperback, 288 pages
English language
Published Oct. 10, 2018 by Broadway Books.
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. --back cover
This was Flynn's first novel & I enjoyed the slow burn of the mystery of the killer...and the circling dread as reporter Camille finds herself revisiting a traumatic past. The conclusion was rapid but satisfying.
Oh, this was not my favorite, I’m afraid. Sharp Objects is skillfully written but the story is much darker than I’d normally go for (I read it for a book club), and the heroine just struggled throughout - I never felt happy for her and I had trouble relating to her, so, in the end, it felt like witnessing the life of someone I cared for but couldn’t connect with just unravel, in truly awful ways, while I could do nothing but watch. I didn’t enjoy it. Like the many descriptions of vomiting in the story, reading it felt like tasting bile for hours.
I didn’t like any of the characters (except her editor back in Chicago). The small town’s inhabitants are pretty uniformly characterized as uneducated, troubled, and driven to alcoholism, addiction, and escapism. I found this whole side of the book to be fairly insulting to small towns. …
Oh, this was not my favorite, I’m afraid. Sharp Objects is skillfully written but the story is much darker than I’d normally go for (I read it for a book club), and the heroine just struggled throughout - I never felt happy for her and I had trouble relating to her, so, in the end, it felt like witnessing the life of someone I cared for but couldn’t connect with just unravel, in truly awful ways, while I could do nothing but watch. I didn’t enjoy it. Like the many descriptions of vomiting in the story, reading it felt like tasting bile for hours.
I didn’t like any of the characters (except her editor back in Chicago). The small town’s inhabitants are pretty uniformly characterized as uneducated, troubled, and driven to alcoholism, addiction, and escapism. I found this whole side of the book to be fairly insulting to small towns. Every character was a negative stereotype of unsophisticated, small-minded, gossipy people. It made it hard to care when you finally find out who did it.
You can also read my review here.
I heard of Gillian Flynn when my sister came up to me with the book Gone Girl and asked me to buy it for her. She told me that she had heard quite a few good reviews about it and wanted to read it. So I got it for her and the book stayed on our shelves since then. I recently went to our local Landmark bookstore and there was an offer on for 2 other books the author had written. I read the synopsis and liked the premise. I have recently been reading a lot of YA, so I wanted to read a crime novel. That is how I came into possession of Sharp Objects and Dark Places by Gillian Flynn.
Sharp Objects was Flynn's debut novel so I started with that. It is one of those novels that slowly creeps …
You can also read my review here.
I heard of Gillian Flynn when my sister came up to me with the book Gone Girl and asked me to buy it for her. She told me that she had heard quite a few good reviews about it and wanted to read it. So I got it for her and the book stayed on our shelves since then. I recently went to our local Landmark bookstore and there was an offer on for 2 other books the author had written. I read the synopsis and liked the premise. I have recently been reading a lot of YA, so I wanted to read a crime novel. That is how I came into possession of Sharp Objects and Dark Places by Gillian Flynn.
Sharp Objects was Flynn's debut novel so I started with that. It is one of those novels that slowly creeps up on you. It was not love at first read with this book but I could not put it down. This book was a little depressing, though not as depressing a read as Flowers in the Attic. Flynn described the dysfunctional relationship between the mother and daughter really well. The contrast of how Adora gtreated her 2 daughters was something that made us appreciate the relationship between the 2 sisters and also between them and their mother. In between all of this there is the dead middle sister.
The best part was that though you could kind of tell where the book was going towards the end (with Adora and Camille, the ending was truly unexpected. I would recommend this book to all Crime novel buffs. Now I am all ready to delve into another paranormal YA. I am now reading Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl. This is based in the South too.
Rating - 3.5/5
