Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Going to Dark Places

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

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Dark Places tells the horrific tale of Libby Day, the sole survivor of her murdered family. Libby was only a child when her mother and two sisters were slaughtered, and she was the key witness who testified that her troubled brother Ben was the murderer. Why did Libby, and the rest of her small town, believe Ben could be guilty of such a brutal crime? Well, he dyed his hair black. He liked heavy metal music. He doodled upside-down crosses in his diary. Satanic panic […]

Quick, Decent Thriller

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

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CW: Self harm I was always a little regretful that I saw Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl in the theater instead of reading the book. The movie was excellent, but I suspect the twists would have been even more surprising in book form. The movie did leave me wanting to read at least one Gillian Flynn book, though, and that’s where Sharp Objects comes in. Sharp Objects is a quick, well paced read that features the main character Camille, a reporter from Chicago. Two young girls […]

A Worthwhile Revisit- Now I Remember Why This Was a Best-Seller

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

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Years ago, when it was first published, Gone Girl was my gate way drug into the world of domestic thrillers/noir. Now I read all of them, and have strong opinions on Gillian Flynn vs. Ruth Ware vs. Kubica, etc. But Gone Girl was my first. So recently, because I had never seen the movie and wanted to compare the two, I did a Gone Girl reread. Surprise, surprise it totally held up. There’s a reason all aspiring domestic/unreliable narrator/thrillers try to claim they are like […]

“I was not a lovable child, and I’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult. “

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

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Did you know that Gillian Flynn hasn’t written anything new since Gone Girl? She has kept busy doing the foreword to I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and writing the film & television adaptations to all three of her novels. Unfortunately she has been radio silent on the publishing front since the lack luster short story The Grownup in 2014! I was really disappointed in the film adaptation of Dark Places so I hadn’t thought much of the novel until my coworker began reading it a few […]

Seeing how a hand carves out meaning with a pencil point lets us remember that the human touch is essential

Act of God by Jill Ciment

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

Accident/A Day's News by Christa Wolf

Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford

And Now You can Go by Vendela Vida

Victory over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist

Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather

The Two of Them by Joanna Russ

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Act of God – 3/5 Stars This is a funny and odd little book by a writer I don’t really know, but as I did a little research into has been writing and publishing for a while. This book is told from an ever-shifting third person limited perspective following different women who are responding to a crisis they all share. Kat and her twin sister Edith are older twins living in the rent-controlled apartment that belonged to their late mother. Their mother was a famous […]

Midwestern Horror Show

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

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It’s been six years since I read Gone Girl but I would probably put this ahead of it as Gillian Flynn’s most realized work. It’s miles ahead of Sharp Objects for sure. There’s not a big departure from anything Flynn has done in other books: a woman horribly abused by life living in a perpetual state of neuroticism and self-loathing who has to either solve a mystery or figure her life out. This time it’s the former and I suppose there’s not a big difference between the three but […]



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