Dark Places

Gillian Flynn does not mess around. When she says she's going to take you to some dark places, boy does she mean it. After finishing Gone Girl, I wasn't sure I'd ever be mentally prepared to step back into the disturbing worlds she seems so hell-bent on creating in such vivid, morbid detail. But I found myself in a bad mood for about a week and was inexplicably drawn to Dark Places, knowing I was only guaranteed an ending, not whether it would be a good one.

Set in both 1985 and present day, Flynn takes us on a mysterious journey of murder, Satan worship, and family drama. Libby is the sole survivor of "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas," and to say her emotional scars run deep is a vast understatement. To say her pockets run just as deep is a misconception that leads to her using her story and involvement in the murder as a way to keep afloat a lifestyle she's not all that interested in. But what she inevitably discovers is that what she thought she knew isn't what she knew at all, and that while she was the one person to help convict the killer 25 years ago, she's probably the only one who knows the least about what happened.

Just reading the back book cover and it's no big surprise who the killer is. Or is it? Like Sharp Objects and Gone Girl, the reader goes through the range of emotions of it being obvious who did it but maybe they didn't do it, not having any idea who did it, thinking every character did it, then figuring out who did it and thinking, D'oh! Why didn't I think of that before? But what I most appreciate about Flynn - besides her penchant for going where we're all thinking without holding back - is that, as the reader, we unravel the mystery right along with the main character. Too many mysteries I've read have the protagonist figuring everything out long before the reader is supposed to, and patronizes the reader by making them wait to find out what they know. With Libby, we had the pleasure of the cogs in our brain turning right along with her's, and thankfully only she was subjected to the immediate result.

An incredibly dark story written with zero glints of sunlight, Flynn enlightens the dark places hidden in all of us and what sets them free and what keeps them in check by our morals. She subtly breaks it down to reveal that none of us are very different and that all of us are just a few misunderstandings away from turning into the darkness ourselves. A must-read you won't mind carrying in your tote - or not even have to since it's completely plausible to finish in a weekend - Flynn expertly weaves together what is great about Gone Girl and what is great about Sharp Objects: mystery with just enough creep to keep it intriguing, and horrifying while still maintaining a bit of fantasy. Or at least that's what I tell myself in order to get to sleep at night...