Dark Places

The books was in a good condition. It has its own element of surprise though there are some parts that are boring.

Total blah.. Sharp objects on the other hand .. very stirring

This book could have been a novella...a whole lot of pages for a whole lot of nothing....the whole plot was so predictable... I don't know how anyone could have enjoyed this book. Disappointed.

ビッチを描かせたら最高の作者だと思う。 今回の主人公のビッチぶりもなかなか。 ほとんど善人が出てこないのに、凄惨なシーンがこれでもかと続くのに、ほのかに光が差すような、絶妙な暗さがあった。 GONE GIRL と同じく、時間が交錯して描かれている手法に「またか」と思ったが、この作品でもそれが効いている。 現在の主人公が真実に近づいて行く時、過去もその瞬間に近づいていく、、、ぐいぐい引き込まれた。 結末が段階的にひねってあるのも私好みだった。

spannend, characterstark, wunderschön düster und vorallem wahnsinnig authentisch! ich war bis vor kurzem noch kein "krimi"-leser weil ich viele klischees im kopf hatte - eine schlimme tat, ein falsch verdächtigter, der wendepunkt, ende. dieses buch aber ist ganz anders: man lernt jeden character sehr intim kennen, sie sind wunderschön geschrieben - und weiß wirklich bis zuletzt nicht wo die wendung kommt. die letzten 150seiten habe ich in einer nacht verschlungen - für mich total untypisch! für mich echt ein must-read und ganz weit oben auf der empfehlungsliste!

From my blog: www.girlathome23.blogspot.com Tumblr: www.girlathome.tumblr.com My Thoughts: No Spoilers Rating: 4-5 Stars Okay, so, this is the first Gillian Flynn novel I have ever had the privilege of reading, and I must say I was not disappointed. This was a very taut, fast paced, psychological thriller that kept me guessing until the very end. I've read some reviews where readers have found the characters in the novel unlikable or they couldn't really connect to them some what. That was not the case for me. I connected with each character from the very beginning. Libby, the main protagonist throughout the novel is a very traumatized young woman. Her defenses against everyone and everything is to shut down, and ignore them after the hell she's been through. I related to Libby from the very first page. Her whit and dark sense of humor reminded me a lot of myself which made me connect with her even more, and made me want to learn her story. If you're looking for an amazing light easy read, this is your go to book. Gillian Flynn surprised me countless times throughout the book. Her writing is flawless and she adds a sense of mystery and suspense with each chapter. I HIGHLY recommend this book! My Thoughts: Spoilers Included This book gutted me, and left me with a serious book hangover. After finding out what really happened of the night of January 3, 1985 I felt so angry, heartbroken, and sad for the Day family. They seemed like such a normal family, I mean they had their fair share of problems, but what family doesn't? The Day's had little money, they lived a seemingly poor life. No new clothes, hardly any food in their home. I have so many feelings for each character in this novel that I would like to take a minute and talk about each one. Patty, was a mother to four children, Libby, Ben, Debby, Michelle, struggling to make ends meet on her broken down families farm. She had no money, no husband, well she had an ex husband Runner, but he was a drug addict and lowlife that I wanted to punch in the face several times. Her farm was being ceased, and her son was in serious trouble, for supposedly molesting a middle school girl named, Krissy. She was frazzled, and frantic during most of her chapters in the book, trying to find Ben before the police did and try and figure out how to come up with the money to save her home and provide for her family. I really felt for this woman, she had a lot on her plate and honestly didn't know how to handle half the situations life put her in I think. She was desperate for money, and wanted to save her children from living a horrible life, so she hired someone to kill her so her kids would receive her life insurance policy. Only, things didn't go according to plan on that night, and her daughter Debby ended up waking in the middle of the night to find her mother stabbed in the kitchen, forcing the man that was hired to kill Debby too, because she saw his face. Libby, was the youngest of the Day clan and the main protagonist throughout the novel. When she was seven she "saw" her brother Ben murder her entire family on January 3, 1985, except she didn't see anything, she heard it, but still the police coerced her into testifying that her fifteen year old brother Ben had committed the crimes, ultimately putting him in jail. Twenty or twenty five years later Libby is an emotional wreck, unable to properly function because of the events of that night. She hides in her home and does as little as possible just barely making it by, much like her mother. She's running out of money, the money she got from donors and book profits after the murders is now gone. A guy named Lyle offers her money to look into what really happened to her family on that night, and so she does. I loved Libby, honestly, I did. Her sarcasm and dark sense of humor made me connect with her because I'm the same way. Ben, was the oldest sibling, and the main suspect in his families murder. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for crimes he didn't commit. Ben was an odd kid, a loner, a freak. He had dark thoughts, but never acted on any of them until his girlfriend Diondra and her friend Trey made him murder a cow as a sacrifice to Satan. He let himself become so closed off from the world that when put in situations he didn't know how to respond, which pissed me off. He was your typical teenaged boy, he defied his mom, wanted sex, and did drugs. He was very influenced by the people around him, always giving in to peer pressure. He needed some damn will power, something! He stood by and watched his girlfriend Diondra kill his little sister Michelle, strangle her because she knew about him getting Diondra pregnant. He did nothing, he didn't stop her, and for that I hated him by the end of the book. He was a follower and did whatever Diondra told him too, and she loved it. I wanted to feel for Ben, and I did, until i found out he let his pregnant cranked up crazy girlfriend murder his little sister. Sure, Michelle was a little blackmailer and a nosy kid, but did she deserve to be killed, no! Ben heard his mother being shot, and his sister being hacked to pieces, but did nothing. By the end of the novel, all the sympathy I had for him vanished and turned to hatred. He may not have killed his family, but he didn't try and stop it either. He was a coward, and yeah I know he was just kid, but still. It was obvious by the end of the book, he did feel guilty for never being able to stand up to anyone and letting it happen, it was why he protected Diondra and went to jail for a crime he didn't commit. The police in this novel were a freaking joke. All the evidence gathered from the murder scene was pushed aside or looked over. The signs were there that Ben hadn't killed everyone. Someone else was involved. But, everyone involved/working on the case wanted to make a name for themselves and brushed him over and the evidence. This book was twisted, but in the best possible way.

Before Gone Girl burst onto the scene with enormous billboards and a Twitter hashtag, Gillian Flynn had already published two novels, the second of them this - Dark Places. It's always hard to say why a particular book explodes at a particular time and why others by the same writer simmer away less noticed. In the case of Gillian Flynn, I suspect it was the complete vileness of both main characters that set Gone Girl apart from other psychological thrillers. Whatever the reason, I think this is no less deserving of a place on the bestsellers list. Dark Places has its fair share of troubled and slightly unsavoury characters but in a more reasoned, moderated and realistic way. Libby, now in her thirties, could be described as lazy, selfish and manipulative. On the other hand, she's depressed, lonely and desperate: her mother and two sisters were brutally murdered on the other side of a bedroom door when she was just a little girl. Not only that, but her once-beloved older brother, Ben, is in prison convicted of the murders. And to top it off, Libby's testimony was crucial in putting him there. At a time when things are looking increasingly hopeless for Libby, she finds herself invited into the fold of Kill Club, a group of true crime obsessives who believe that Ben is innocent. At first riled that they are questioning the testimony that she still stands by, Libby agrees (in exchange for the money she desperately needs) to do some digging up of the past. She has to open up boxes and memories that she's kept sealed for over two decades, and speak to people she'd rather pretend didn't exist. This includes visiting her waste-of-space father and, of course, her brother. Ben was an unhappy teenager in the 1980s, the eldest of four children his single mother could hardly afford to keep and a disappointment to his regularly-disappearing father. So he couldn't believe his luck when Diondra - a moody, violent but undeniably `cool' girl from school - is interested in him. Diondra belongs to a different social class and often has the run of her parents' house, giving Ben a glimpse of what his life could be like if he could just escape the confines of the poverty-striken family farm. Through Diondra and her cousin, Ben finds himself caught on the fringes of a world of drug abuse and Satanic rituals, a world that (like Diondra) both excites and terrifies him. Decades later, having lived the majority of his life on death row, Ben finally receives the visit from Libby that he's been waiting for - so why won't he open up and give her the answers she needs? One of the things I liked best in Dark Places was the well-crafted narrative structure. Libby's story spans several weeks as we understand her background and current situation and then follow her as she explores those dark places from her childhood. But alternating chapters are told from a different perspective: sometimes Ben's and sometimes their mother's, and both from the day of the murders itself. This is important for two reasons: one, it gives us insight to events and situations which Libby couldn't know about due to her age or her own movements that day; and two, it reveals a lot about two central characters, who are more rounded than Libby remembers them to be (inevitably, she remembers her mother through rose-tinted glasses and her brother as the person who ruined her life). More than this, though, the narrative is so well put-together that it doesn't feel like it's constantly jumping around. Rather, especially in the first half of the book, the end of each chapter leads seamlessly on to the start of the next, even if chronologically there is a huge gap. And clues are carefully inserted into the day-of-the-murders chapters, things that you barely take notice of as you read them but that later fall into place and help to make sense of everything Libby is uncovering. Often the sign of the best writing is that you don't notice it, but I really appreciated the care taken in stitching this story together. I'm trying to think of what I didn't like, but nothing is coming to mind. The characters here are more rounded and real than those in Gone Girl, and the narrative approach is similar but I think more nuanced. The Day family story is set against a gritty backdrop of class divisions, poverty, domestic abuse and prejudice. And it did keep me guessing. I kept thinking I'd figured out what really happened the night of the murders, and there were a couple of things I predicted or worked out ahead of time. But things only fully fell into place for me at the end, when we find out just before Libby does how everything fits together. If you liked Gone Girl, you should read Dark Places. And if you didn't like Gone Girl but enjoy a well-crafted psychological thriller, you should read Dark Places anyway. For me, it's a better book - it perhaps doesn't have the big twist and the edge-of-your-seat discomfort of Gone Girl, but it's cleverer and more subtle whilst still being surprising and discomforting.