Gone Girl: The Thriller That Left Me Shaken (Book Review)

Well... I will say it. There are books and there are books. There are books you read and you just be like “well, that was good”, and then, the ones you read that just makes you sit there trying to process what you just read. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was that book for me. It wasn’t the typical thriller book I was used to, I actually started the book thinking it was just another story about a missing wife.

I’ve read so much thriller, that I started to think that no plot twist could really surprise me much anymore because I felt I have read nearly all the thrillers with the best plot twist. Well... I was wrong. Gone Girl isn’t the typical thriller where you’re just looking for answers until everything neatly falls into place. No, it actually left me unsettled, frustrated and also very impressed by how darkly clever it was. Making me wonder why I just got around reading this book.

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The Plot

The morning of Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth marriage anniversary, Amy disappears. Her husband, Nick, comes home to find the house in disarray, enough to make it look like there was a struggle. Naturally, the police and media get involved, and all fingers point to Nick. Everyone starts whispering things like “He killed his wife”

The story alternates between Nick’s point of view and Amy entries from her diaries, ones she wrote in the past. In the diary, Amy paints herself as the perfect wife who only wanted to make to make Nick happy. But reveals a darker side of Nick – cold, detached and even abusive. As readers, we start to think that Amy was only the victim in a dangerous marriage.

But then Gillian Flynn does something genius. Half way through the book, she flipped everything on its head. Turns out that Amy isn’t dead nor was she the victim. She staged her own disappears to frame Nick for murder, and the diary entry we have been reading? Fake. It was just a carefully constructed fiction to make Nick appear guilty. But the truth is, Amy is the evil one, she is brilliant, manipulative and very good in playing the victim. I was fooled too.

The rest of the book follows the fall out. Nick tries to prove his innocence while dealing with media circus. Amy, on the other hand, is hiding out, watching the world crucify her husband. But when she became broke and vulnerable, she leans on her obsessive ex-boyfriend, Desi. That doesn’t end well for him. Amy kills Desi and returned home, spinning yet another story about how he kidnapped and tortured her. Everyone welcomes her back as a survivor, Nick is trapped and the final blow comes when Amy reveals that she is pregnant. With that, Nick realizes that he cannot escape her, he stays in the marriage knowing fully well the kind of person she really is.

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I don’t usually enjoy characters this unlikeable but I did enjoy reading about Nick and Amy. Nick, on one hand, is weak and selfish. He cheats on his wife, lies constantly and cares too much about appearance. And Amy, she is something else entirely, to be honest. She’s not just manipulative but a mastermind of storytelling, she knows how to play people, how to twist everything that happened and how to make herself look like a saint while everyone else burns. And she gets away with it.

This book isn’t just about a marriage gone wrong. Amy weaponizes her intelligence and her talent for fiction. Nick weaponizes his charm, or at least tried to. And the media? Well, the media feeds off the drama without caring about what’s real.

Also, the ending. Amy coming back, Nick staying and a baby on the way… it’s not really the “happy ending” people expects. Its claustrophobic. It makes you realize that Nick isn’t just trapped by Amy, he’s complicit in choosing to stay. I think that’s where I started to question human nature a bit.

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My Rating

4.5 out of 5 stars.

I cannot give it anything less. The writing is razor-sharp, the pacing is perfect and the plot twist is one of the best I’ve ever read in a thriller. It’s not a book that would comfort you or give you characters to admire. It’s a book that would disturb you, fascinate you and keep you thinking long after the first chapter. If you haven’t read Gone Girl yet, do yourself a favour and pick it up.

Image is a screenshot from my E-library