Gone Girl by Gillian FlynnGone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Narrator: Julia Whelan, Kirby Heyborne
Published by Random House Audio on August 26, 2014 (first published May 24, 2012)
Genres: Mystery, Crime Fiction, Thriller
Length: 19 hrs 11 mins
Format: Audiobook
Purchase at Bookshop.org or Purchase at Amazon
Add on Goodreads
four-half-stars

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

Gone Girl was all the rage a couple of years ago, but I didn’t get around to listening to it until now. I shouldn’t have put it off. It was unique, well-done, definitely attention-grabbing, maybe not quite unputdownable, but close.

Nick and Amy are not nice people. Neither is really the good guy, although you do sympathize with Nick. The audio had two narrators, one for Nick and one for Amy, which I thought was a great choice. It always takes me a while to get used to anything different than one narrator of the same gender as the main character, but this format worked so well with the story it was the perfect choice. Both narrators did a great job capturing the points of view, the dark humor, the nuances in the phrasing. I think that listening to it probably made it even better than reading it in print would have.

I can’t say much about the plot without ruining it, but it did keep me guessing, wondering what the truth was, who the bad guy was. I knew it wasn’t as straight forward as it first appeared, mostly due to the hype when the book and then the movie came out, but I wasn’t sure how it was all going to fit together. I have to say I love how Flynn plotted the whole thing. And the ending was perfect for the rest of the story.

Now, I have to convince my husband to watch the movie with me. One of the guys at work told him not to watch it because it would make him paranoid.

About Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn is an American author and was a television critic for Entertainment Weekly. Her first novel, Sharp Objects, won the 2007 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for the best thriller. Flynn, who lives in Chicago, grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated at the University of Kansas, and qualified for a Master’s degree from Northwestern University.

12 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.