Dark Places

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

I was in the mood for a good fiction book to just escape into a good story, and when I looked for a book to immediately check out on my Kindle, this one popped up.  I didn't love Gone Girl, but I did enjoy the way the author turned a phrase, so I thought I would check this book out.

I liked it "ok" even as it was definitely not a feel-good story.  The main character, Libby, survived the murder of her mother and two sisters when she was just seven years old and fingered her older brother for the crime.  Fast-forward 24 years and she has barely existed--she has no life, no friends, no job (or skills to get one), and she's out of the pity money the public had sent her.  The book jumps back and forth between Libby's perspective in current time and the advancement of the story up to the point of the crime through both her mother's and her brother's eyes.  The title of the book comes from her "labeling the memories (of witnessing her family's deaths) as if they were a particularly dangerous region:  Darkplace" (10), and she tries very hard NOT to remember them.  Until she meets a club of people who try to solve crimes as a hobby.

I can't heartily recommend this book as it has more language and detail than I prefer reading. In other ways, however, Flynn had an enjoyable way with words:

"That was another of my mom's words:  glum.  It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people.  Having the blues aggressively" (9).

"Patty was a slip of a woman, wavery and weak, quickly optimistic, but even more easily deflated" (103).

"Ben worked the music in his head, his brain sizzling, feeling angry-frantic, the way he always did to metal, the guitar strum never letting up, bundling him tenser and tenser, bumping his head up and down, the drums shooting up his spine, the whole thing this rage-frenzy, not letting him think straight, just keeping him in a tight shake.  His whole body felt like a cocked fist, ready for release" (132).