Friday Reads: Gone Girl

This week in honour of the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival my #FridayReads is the chilling Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn which is published by our sister imprint W&N.

Gone Girl is the story of a day gone horribly wrong.

On the outside, Amy and Nick are the perfect American couple with the perfect marriage. Sure, times have been tough, the recession has taken its toll on their lives and family illness has forced them to leave the bright lights of NYC and move to Nick’s much more modest Midwestern hometown. But, despite all their trials the couple are set to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary.

Until Amy goes missing. There is no body, but there is clear evidence of a struggle. Has Amy been murdered? Kidnapped? All of the evidence points to her husband, Nick . . .

Told in alternating first person points of view and diary entries the Gone Girl shows you the story of a marriage from its hopeful beginnings to its eventual unravelling. But all of that is really just surface and doesn’t actually tell you anything about the book. I know and I’m sorry about that, but honestly there is nothing I can tell you about this book that won’t spoil the reading experience for you.

Gone Girl is a fantastic mind game of a book. Every time you think you know what is going on the goal posts shift and change. I read this book in one breathless sitting on a Saturday night (I don’t read books on a Saturday night, not ever). I kept trying to put the book down, but then found that I was at a part that was just too tense to stop reading. This happened for hours. My husband was beginning to get worried about me. I was beginning to get worried about me.

Because that’s what Gone Girl does, it’s a compulsive book that makes you wonder about everything. How well you can ever really know the person you are married to? What secrets really exist behind closed doors? And how happy is anyone really?

Gone Girl is a book I cannot shut up about. It’s the kind of book that once you’ve read it you immediately want to talk about. That’s natural. When you read it I’d love to hear what you think. Send me a tweet: @gennmcmenemy

Until then, pick up a copy of Gone Girl and get reading. You won’t be disappointed.