Genre: Mystery, Crime
Source: Purchased
Goodreads SummaryOn a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?
“It was my fifth lie to the police and I was just getting started”
Media Frenzies = Entertaining
A friend of mine highly recommended this book to me. It was a story we all know well…. Wife ends up missing, the husband must have done it. As I was reading this story a very familiar story came to my mind, the Lacy and Scott Peterson story. But Scott Peterson, Nick is not. The story is told from Nick and Amy’s POV. Amy’s is told through diary entries. The dual perspective gives you a rounded view of the marriage from both sides, not just one. I loved the chapters of Amy’s diary. She was very funny and I could relate to a lot of her story. When telling her meeting of Nick, she talks about being 32 and single. With lines like, “I know I am not right to settle, but it doesn’t make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, 'This is perfect as if I am the one dating me.'” Exactly Amy, exactly. Once I got into the book, I had a HARD time putting it down. It was like I had a 2000 piece puzzle and I wasn’t sure if all the pieces were from the same puzzle or several different puzzles. All logic pieces point to Nick but you knew there was just something that was missing. Not all the pieces fit. Their marriage was one I am sure a lot of people could relate too. Five years in the ups and downs of all the things life can throw at you can turn a happy marriage to an unhappy marriage. So it is something that I feel a lot of people can be like 'yep, I get it'. The plot being so familiar but yet so different was a good take on an old fashion story. There is a lot of love there from this chick.
“One should never marry a man who doesn’t own a decent pair of scissors. That would be my advice. It leads to bad things”
It looks bad for Nick VERY bad
I will say I LOVED the middle. The beginning and ending not so much . The beginning was awful and very slow. It picked up, became AMAZING, then the author dropped the ball, and I HATED HATED HATED the awful ending. It was almost like Gillian gave up or ran out of ideas. I hated BOTH the main characters by the end of the book. I had zero love for any of them. She did all this build up. She had these great multi-dimensional characters, this great story, and she just killed it. My personal advice skip the first and the ending. Just read the middle and make up your own ending. You will be happier that way! I was told the movie coming out did have a different ending of the book. Thank God! Maybe they took the time to get that one right.
“Act correctly, don’t blow it, act the way a man acts when he hears this news”
Final thoughts about this confusing mess
I feel iffy. In some ways it’s amazing, and in some ways it was awful. Overall, I liked it once I got into it. I stayed up all night to finish it. It has been a while since I stayed up all night to read a book. Once I got to the end I was almost mad I stayed up for that conclusion. But the parts I liked did make up for it.
eeek, if only the middle is good, I don't know. I hate bad endings.
ReplyDeleteI get that completely! I know it was hard for her to get into, but everyone said to give it time because it gets so good. She did and the middle was fabulous, but that ending got her.
ReplyDelete