Thoughts on : Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Posted by Kay on August 17, 2018 12:39 pm in 4 stars reads | 2 comments

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Genre : Thriller
Stand alone

About the Book  :

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice” of Kinnakee, Kansas. She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer.

Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben. Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club—for a fee.

As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer.

My Thoughts :

I love Gillian Flynn. Gone Girl is one of my favorite fiction novels, possibly my favorite thriller. Sharp Object was dark and unsettling and an excellent thriller too (and the HBO adaptation is absolutely great). The Grownup was short but still fantastically written.

And then for years I preciously kept Dark Places unread, knowing that once I read it, there would be no more new Gillian Flynn for me to read for quite a while.

Dark Places has all the typical makings of a Gillian Flynn novel : it’s dark and disturbing, features complex and mostly unlikable characters, and the plot is well developed. On top of that, the writing is on point. All things that I love in a good thriller.

Once again, for me the strong point of the novel were the characters and how human they felt. They were immensely flawed but fascinating, and while I couldn’t personally relate to most of what they were going through, the author’s writing made it easy to empathize with them. Libby, especially, captivated me. I wanted in turns to yell at her and give her a good hug.

The story itself was incredibly interesting, and the dark atmosphere was seeping through the pages. The book isn’t that long, but there’s an oppressive quality to it that made it impossible for me to read more than a few pages at once. Whether it’s in the story’s present or past, everything is ominous and creepy and undeniably pessimistic.

I have to say though, I didn’t enjoyed the different points of view that much. I understood why we had to see things from Libby’s mother and brother’s perspectives, but I didn’t connect with these parts of the book as much. I think I was just too fascinated by Libby, and not really interested by the others, especially Ben.

All in all, this was another solid novel by Gillian Flynn. While I would rate it as my least favorite of hers, it’s still miles ahead of many of the thrillers I’ve recently read. I’m sad I don’t have more of her books to read now. I certainly hope we’ll get to read something new before long!