Book Reviews - Gillian Flynn

I just finished reading the first two books by the author, Gillian Flynn. They were both rather dark books. The first book is Sharp Objects. Here is a little bit from the inside cover: "WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart
Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls." Camille is a cutter who instead of just randomly cutting herself she cuts words into her skin. She goes back home to cover these murders but it isn't easy since she doesn't have a good relationship with her mother and doesn't know her half-sister at all. Fully understanding these different twists you had to read several pages into the book.

Her second book entitled, Dark Places is just as dark but maybe not as dark as the first one. Here is the blurb from that book: "Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her." This one I wanted to keep reading so I knew what really happened. Did Ben kill her family or was it someone else like the Kill Club suggests.

As mentioned both books are rather dark and not necessarily light reads. Both women in the book are damaged characters who act out sexually, violently, and other ways to keep the hurt and past at bay. Both have to come to terms with their past in order to move forward and heal.