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Title: Dark Places

Author: Gillian Flynn

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 440

Rating: 3.75/5

Gillian Flynn – Dark Places

This is the last of the Gillian Flynn books that I’ve been working through, and it’s also probably my favourite of her novels. It still has a few flaws, but not as many as I found with Gone Girl and Sharp Objects. I’d rank it as her second best after The Grownup, which is a novella. It goes The Grownup > Dark Places > Gone Girl > Sharp Objects, although those last two are pretty close together.

Here, we’re basically following the story of Libby Day, whose parents and family were horrifically murdered when she was a child and whose brother is in jail serving time for the crime. It seems as though the past is the past, all dead and buried, until Libby starts to dig into it a little more. From there, we basically embark on the typical Flynn plot, full of twists and turns and the past coming back to haunt people.

Unfortunately, it also has another Gillian Flynn hallmark which is the fact that it starts to drag a little in the middle. This seems to happen in each of her novels and I inevitably end up just skimming through the latter half of the book until the climax starts to kick in. I also wasn’t too taken with the way that it jumped backwards and forwards through time and from perspective to perspective. It wasn’t necessarily that it was difficult to follow along with it, it’s just that there were certain perspectives that didn’t interest me too much.

Gillian Flynn

I had a few theories along the way as to what might happen, but none of them turned out to be correct. At the same time, I was disappointed by the actual ending because I felt as though it was too obscure. I don’t want to share the specifics but I’m pretty sure that someone popped up right at the end who hadn’t been mentioned before then. It felt a little deus ex machina, and that was a shame.

Still, if you like psychological thrillers and/or if you’ve read some of Flynn’s stuff before and you know that you like her style, I would say that this is worth reading. It’s the best of her novels, at least if you ask me, and it does keep you turning the pages to find out what happens. That’s all you can ask for from a thriller. It also means that I’m all caught up with Gillian Flynn’s work, and I’ll keep on reading whatever else she publishes. I think bigger things are coming.

Gillian Flynn Promo

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Benjamin Ludwig – The Original Ginny Moon | Review

Title: The Original Ginny Moon

Author: Benjamin Ludwig

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 364

Rating: 5*/5

Disclaimer: While I aim to be unbiased, I received a copy of this for free to review.

Benjamin Ludwig – The Original Ginny Moon

This book exceeded my expectations and made me rethink the way I think about things. It’s well-deserving of a five-star review because the author is able to use language in a way that brings autism to life, which is why it’s earned comparisons to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Personally, I think it does a better job of it, and Ludwig’s Ginny Moon is quite the character – more three dimensional than most other characters, and that’s a testament to the strength of Ludwig’s writing.

Loosely speaking, the book is told through the eyes of its protagonist, 14-year-old Ginny Moon. Ginny suffers from autism and she’s currently living with her forever parents, but she wants to find a way back to her abusive mother so that she can check on her Baby Doll. Along the way, she gets herself into plenty of trouble, but you can understand why she makes the choices that she makes, even if you don’t agree with them. And ultimately, that’s one of the strengths of this book – it puts you inside Ginny’s mind, and it gives you a great understanding of the way in which she sees things.

That all comes down to the skills of the writer, and so kudos to Ludwig for that – especially because this is his debut novel. He even nailed the little twist at the end, which I didn’t see coming but which made perfect sense as soon as it happened. That’s the hallmark of a good storyteller, and Stephen King does the same in many of his books. Benjamin Ludwig is not Stephen King, but he is Benjamin Ludwig – and that’s a name that you can expect to hear more from in the coming years.

This, then, is the impressive start to what I’m sure will be a successful career. Better still, it’s the kind of book that we all should read, because it helps us to relate and understand.