cbr10bingo…White Whale
I accidentally bought this on my Kindle on March 6, 2015. I don’t think I had even read Gone Girl yet at that point, but I think I had heard about Ms. Flynn. This has been on my “to read” list for a while now, so I’m calling it my White Whale. Like I said above, I have the Kindle version, but I wasn’t reading it, and I’m reading another book on my Kindle currently, so I downloaded the audiobook version and I listened to it in my car.
This story is really messed up. We meet Libby Day, a lazy slacker whose entire family was murdered nearly twenty-five years ago. Yes, I understand this is a horrible tragedy, and I can’t imagine surviving it. However, Libby is super unlikable. She’s surviving on the money that people donated to her when her family was killed. She doesn’t have a job, she basically doesn’t do anything, she steals from people and places, and she doesn’t like dogs. If you know anything about me, that last one’s a deal breaker. She’s pretty much out of money and doesn’t want to get a job. So she decides to take up a random stranger on his offer to get money from his “Kill Club”.
The Kill Club is a bunch of people who are obsessed with the murder of Libby’s family. The story goes back and forth between Libby’s mom and brother (separately) on the day of the murder in 1985, and Libby in the present. I loooove the way the story unfolded. You were learning along with Libby what actually happened that night, which was really interesting.
There’s a couple (like 3 or 4) descriptions of animal harm / torture that was really hard to listen to. I was glad I had the option to fast forward, because I don’t need those visuals in my head.
I’d give this 4 stars. It was definitely a good book, and a great story. However, I frequently had a hard time rooting for the characters we’re supposed to root for, and I found the animal parts very disturbing.