Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn Review

My Rating: 8 (out of 10)

I honestly don't know where to start.  This book has blown my mind and has left an imprint on it that I don't think I can ever get out.  Books like this one are exactly the reason I enjoy them.

Let me start out by saying, this book in no means is appropriate for young audiences.  The swearing, drinking and sex are very fluent in the book.  Flynn uses the right amount of details in every part of the book.  It was honestly great getting to the end of the book without any further questions.  She does a great job of tying up and loose ends.  Immediately upon finishing this book, I googled to see if it was a true story because of the detail in it.

While this book is morbidly dark, it reflects on a side of books we normally don't see.  All the main characters in the book have an extreme amount of flaws.  The main character Camille, although she has out right flaws throughout the entire book, she is left wondering about herself at the very end.  She wonders if she will fall in the same footsteps as her mother.  Camille is a very self loathing, under loved and brutal woman.  She carves words into her skin to take some of her thoughts away.  It seemed to me she was only longing for attention and approval.  And the only ones she got it from ever were her editor and his wife.  Honestly, just sad.

Oh, wow.  Adora.  When I first read her name I wondered if it was because people adored her.  Why of course they did.  She was the epitome of southern rich.  She was gossipy, stuck up, and very well put together.  On the outside.  She puts on an amazing facade to outsiders.  When others are not around, she seems very detached and unloving, leaving her daughters to crave attention.

Amma.  She seems like a (relatively) normal 13 year old.  Trying to test all of her limits.  She has a very much older sister who she didn't really know.  She is a very jealous, spoiled, and antagonistic.  She looks at every situation and sees who she can harm.  I honestly believe she may have suffered from split personality disorder.

The book itself, is very well put together.  The twist at the end is nothing like I expected.  I figured within the first 50 pages I had the killer pinned.  It was honestly surprising and almost gut wrenching that it wasn't the one I expected.

After finishing this book, it has me thinking about others who can be so cruel and what must run through their minds.  I am glad I just get to read and not have to deal with a mind like that.

I plan on reading more of Gillian Flynn's books.



Next up on my booklist:

Breaking Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone in the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations.  But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swaps, and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.
Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met.  When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.


Have a comment you would like to add or the next suggestion for a book?  Leave it below!

Divergent by Veronica Roth Review

My Rating: 5 (Out of 10)



After much hope and anticipation that this book was going to be an amazing dystopian masterpiece, I have to say I have been let down.  I had high hopes with it being a goodreads choice right on the cover and after all most of the books I discover to read are from goodreads so I figured I would trust them.  Unfortunately, this time I felt they were wrong.

The first 400 pages just felt like a huge back story.  There were brief moments of action but none that seemed to leave a lasting impact on me.  The last 80 pages made me give a higher rating of the book than what I was expecting.  The dramatics in those pages is what is keeping me interested in the series.

As I was reading through the first part of the book, my mind kept going to The Hunger Games.  No, not in the way that I loved that book, but the dystopian worlds in both books had very striking similarities.  The new world broken up into different sections again.  The challenged they face.  Things a long that path.  But the similarities stop there.  

In most of the books I read, I often find myself trying to peek at the end and see where it leaves off.  But not in this one.  I knew what was going to happen next.  I wasn't drawn into the main characters and often felt like just an outsider.  When I read books, I love to feel like I am actually in them.  This one felt like I was a camera crew following someone around.

The love story in this book, although expected, to me, was pretty dull.  Roth set it up in the very beginning as soon as Tris got to her actual fraction.  To me, a teacher and student romance is so over played now.  I wanted something different in this book.  I was hoping for some kind of twist.  It never came.

The main highlighting features of this book that made me give it higher stars are:
- The last 80 pages (enough for me to be interested in the second book)
- The serum/ hallucinations.  This was the major part of the book that saved itself.  It offered a twist that I have not seen in a dystopian book so far.  It was a good plot change when Roth included them.
- Al.  Yes he played such a small role, but for some reason I found myself feeling sorry for Al.  I think he was the main game changer when it came to how Tris was going to deal with herself and find out where exactly she fell in the ranks of the Dauntless.


What am I hoping for in the next one:
- Find out more about what happened after the uprising.  Will there be a war?
- How does Caleb, Peter and Marcus all fit into the equation?


Next up I am reading Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn.
Description:  Fresh from her brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille Preaker's first assignment at her second-rate daily paper takes her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.  As she works to uncover the truth, Camille finds herself indentifying with the young victims - a bit too strongly.  Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.


Feel like adding something to my review?  Comment below or leave me a suggestion of what to read and review next.