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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

Click here to buy Dark Places.

Stephen King – The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon | Review

Title: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Author: Stephen King

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 342

Rating: 4*/5

Stephen King – The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

This book was interesting, because it’s very different to what you might expect if you’re a big Stephen King fan. It’s much more streamlined, almost basic, in a way that reminds me of a fairy tale. It makes for an interesting change, especially if you’ve just finished reading IT, The Stand or one of his longer works. That’s mostly down to the fact that there’s no need here to go into the characters‘ backstories. He can focus on the action, and the action is gripping and exciting along the way. Better still, you could read it to a kid without giving them nightmares.

Loosely speaking, the plot follows what happens to a young girl after she gets lost during a walk through the woods with her mother and brother. Her family is arguing and paying her little attention, so when she needs to go to the toilet she decides to wander off. But once she leaves the path, she can’t seem to find it again. That leaves her lost in the woods, struggling to survive with no company except for the radio on her walkman, which she uses to listen in to Red Sox games. In particular, she likes to imagine she has company in the form of Tom Gordon, the Red Sox player, who she has a huge crush on.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is good enough, but it’s not amazing. For any other author, a book like this would be one hell of an achievement, but for Stephen King, it’s just okay. Still worth reading, but not revolutionary.

One last thing to mention is that the book actually ends on page 298, but the page count is higher because it also comes with a preview of Hearts in Atlantis. I haven’t read that yet, but I do own a copy, so I guess I’ll work my way round to that sometime soon.