Helpful Score: 3
After devouring Gone Girl, I couldn't wait to get my hands on more from Gillian Flynn. After only a few pages of Dark Places, it was obvious that I was going to love Flynn's earlier work just as much. Maybe even a little more.
Flynn is masterful at creating characters that aren't the least bit likeable, but completely engaging. For example, it's hard to feel sympathy for the "heroine," prickly shoplifter Libby Day, short-tempered, unmotivated, entitled -- and the lone survivor of her family's mass murder in the Satan-crazed '80s. But it's impossible not to want to peel back the layers of her story, to shine a light on Libby's titular "dark places." And chapters told in alternating voices, including Libby's murdered mother, Patty, and her big brother, Ben, imprisoned for his family's grisly murders, provide a great way to slowly unfurl the truth behind the night of the killings.
Once again, Flynn has captured a single day gone horribly wrong in the life of a truly twisted American family. And once again, I was genuinely blindsided when the author's carefully plotted reveal finally played out. What a great read.
Flynn is masterful at creating characters that aren't the least bit likeable, but completely engaging. For example, it's hard to feel sympathy for the "heroine," prickly shoplifter Libby Day, short-tempered, unmotivated, entitled -- and the lone survivor of her family's mass murder in the Satan-crazed '80s. But it's impossible not to want to peel back the layers of her story, to shine a light on Libby's titular "dark places." And chapters told in alternating voices, including Libby's murdered mother, Patty, and her big brother, Ben, imprisoned for his family's grisly murders, provide a great way to slowly unfurl the truth behind the night of the killings.
Once again, Flynn has captured a single day gone horribly wrong in the life of a truly twisted American family. And once again, I was genuinely blindsided when the author's carefully plotted reveal finally played out. What a great read.
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