Gone Girl is Gillian Flynn’s third novel and I was damn excited when I saw it was coming out. As many of my friends know, I loved her second book, Dark Places and recommend it regularly.

Gone Girl is about the disappearance of Amy Dunne on her five year wedding anniversary to Nick Dunne. We learn very quickly on that Nick is a pretty shitty husband. And he doesn’t get any better as we find out more about him. Of course, we learn all sorts of things about Amy, too. I won’t give much away about the plot because you’ll figure out very quickly what happened to Amy. The pleasure in this book is the unraveling of who Amy really is and Nick’s journey is pretty interesting, too.

We recorded a Cocktail Hour podcast about this book and Andy, Colette Moody, and I all had differing feelings about the story and the characters. One thing we could all agree on is that there are no likable characters in this book. That’s not to say the characters weren’t well written or developed or that the author made any major missteps with the plot. They’re all mostly assholish, weak, or crazy. And I like that.

I don’t want to say much more because I don’t want to ruin anything for you. I enjoyed the book a lot. I got the audio book and, after talking with Andy and Colette, I’m happy that I did. I think the two narrators, one for Amy and one for Nick, did a fantastic job and it added to the emotional buildup and helped me to connect with the characters more. But audio books aren’t for everyone.

I also thought that the end went on much longer than needed and that took away from some of my enjoyment of the book. Flynn’s writing style is engaging and keeps the story moving along quickly and the third part of the book felt like it just took the story too far. For me, the exciting part had reached its height and what happened after that was interesting but by the time I got to the end, it felt anti-climactic. Chilling, to be sure, but I was pretty much done well before the writing was.

If you’ve read any of Flynn’s other work and enjoyed it, you’ll like this one. I still favor Dark Places over Gone Girl but I do love that she’s definitely got a sick and twisted mind.