Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

When two girls, aged nine and ten are abducted and killed in Wind Gap, Missouri, Camille Preaker is sent back to her home town to investigate and report on the crimes. Camille, self-described 'white trash from old money', is the daughter of one of the richest families in town. Long-haunted by a childhood tragedy and estranged from her mother for years, Camille suddenly finds herself installed once again in her family's Victorian mansion, reacquainting herself with her distant mother and the half-sister she barely knows, a precocious 13-year-old who holds a disquieting grip on the town and surrounds herself with a group of vampish teenage girls. As Camille struggles to remain detached from the evidence, her relationship with her neurotic, hypochondriac mother threatens to topple her hard-won mental stability. Working alongside the police chief and a special agent from out of town, Camille tries to uncover the mystery of who killed these little girls and why. But there are deeper psychological puzzles: Why does Camille identify so strongly with the dead girls? And how is this connected to the death of another sister years earlier?

Reviewed by clementine on

3 of 5 stars

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3.5 stars

Gillian Flynn can write a twisting plot and terrifying characters like no one else. Those are the primary reasons I enjoyed Sharp Objects overall. I thought that I'd figured it out from the beginning, and Flynn let me think I had, too - but, of course, I was wrong. And the characters in this book were particularly chilling: Camille is one of the most interesting narrators I've encountered recently. She wasn't likeable nor sympathetic, yet that didn't ruin the reading experience for me.

I didn't find the actual writing quite so compelling as Flynn's other books. The pacing was weird to me; in places it would be quite slow, and then it would move so quickly towards something exciting that I had to take a moment to absorb it. And, as usual with Flynn's novels, I wasn't thrilled with the ending. It felt very rushed and then a bit too perfect. But the conclusion wasn't as bewildering to me as that of Dark Places, which I felt really threw the book off.

I will note, for anyone interested in reading this book, that it is exceptionally dark and disturbing. Dark Places was, too, but I have to say that this one was even more so for me. I can see from the reviews on here that that's not everyone's bag!

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 22 June, 2016: Finished reading
  • 22 June, 2016: Reviewed