Some families argue about politics.
The Day family argues about who survived the massacre.
I picked up this book to fill Kansas in my 50 States Challenge. What I got instead was a memo that Gillian Flynn doesn’t write psychological thrillers. She writes psychological wrecking balls. To say this book is a psychological thriller is an understatement. It’s the kind of story I should have started on a Saturday so I didn’t have to drag myself through work the next day running on three hours of sleep.
The alternating timelines made the book twistier, but it needed to be that way. We discover the past as Libby discovers it in the present, and that parallel unraveling works beautifully. We got to see assumptions being made that were way off base but deeply affected the people they involved. I actually trusted Libby as a narrator, even though she’s deeply flawed. Seeing the story through her eyes gave the whole thing a warped but fascinating perspective.
As for the big question: Evil: born or nurtured? Personally, I lean toward nurtured, though I know some people really are born without a conscience. The reveal completely blindsided me. You’d think after all the murder mysteries I’ve devoured, I’d know better than to assume the killer had to be a man. Gender bias much? <facepalm>
Flynn does a brilliant job weaving in the unreliability of memory. Trauma distorts everything, and Libby’s faulty or missing memories made perfect sense given how disturbing her past is and what she lived through. And speaking of disturbing, let’s talk about the Kill Club. Between Libby’s apathy and their obsessive energy, I honestly found the Kill Club more unsettling. That’s some hobby to have. Why can't we all just...crochet?
Dark Places is haunting, twisty, and unsettling in all the right ways. Flynn doesn’t let you look away, and she doesn’t let you get comfortable, either. Ten out of five stars.
