I didn’t feel that hope in Gone Girl. The book started at a high point and went steadily downhill the more I learned about the crime – and I use the word crime in its most broad sense.  Mind you, I don’t love murder mysteries, and Gone Girl is that.  But even aside from violence, I had trouble with the central characters.  Okay, Barbara, you don’t have to like them to appreciate their stories.  I can’t tell you how many times I said that as I read.  But I found these characters sad.  Sad.

That said, I couldn’t put the book down! I was riveted to the plot twists and turns – this, even after I knew the ending.  (Sorry, but I’m one of those who reads the last page when the suspense is too great.)  Gone Girl is brilliantly plotted, skillfully written from alternating POVs, and perfectly paced.  This is a modern book, not only in format and content, but in language. I was definitely in the minds of a husband and wife in their mid-thirties and early forties in 2012.  Indeed, the characters are so fully drawn that, by the end of the book, I knew them intimately.  I didn’t like them.  But I did know them, which deepened my appreciation of the psychological insights Ms. Flynn shared.

I read Gone Girl in a single day, definitely the way to go, though I was reading ‘til midnight.  I found it edgy and clever, a cliff-hanger at a dozen different spots.  Do I recommend it?  If you like intricately-layered psychological thrillers, yes.