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This one is a dark and disturbing psychological thriller from, for many, the reigning queen of the dark and the disturbing. Almost all the characters are flawed - some a lot more scarily than the others. The narrative irresistibly pulls the reader into the deep, dark, dungeons of the lead characters' minds. The ending holds a twist that took me by surprise, by the sheer abruptness of its coming.
Sharp Objects is, barring a few somewhat implausible elements, a novel that holds the reader in its grip with its terrifying darkness, quick pace and quirky humour.
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My first Gillian Flynn book and I really liked it! I had seen the Gone Girl movie and my mom watched the miniseries for this book. I was sometimes in the room while she was watching so because of that, I did know some very big spoilers going in.
I knew that Amma had the teeth in the dollhouse, I did not know about the munchausen by proxy stuff with the mom. However, this didn't really effect my enjoyment that much because so much of this book is about character work and what a town and a family can do to a person and the literal and figurative marks that are left on a person. This is a pretty short book but it packs a punch in that short time. I thought Flynn did an excellent job writing complex characters that you can never really understand without making that incredibly frustrating. I really loved reading about Camille. She is a complex, very frustrating character but I liked the way she navigated the complicated dynamics around her. The ending was slightly sped up compared to the rest of the book. This book isn't actually really focused in solving the crime so when that part comes up it goes by pretty fast. I really enjoyed the very last few pages of this book. That ending really made the book for me.

I'm definitely interested in reading more by Flynn after this one. I really enjoyed her writing style. It was a lot slower than other thrillers which made me really sit with the story. I know a lot of people have already read this but I would recommend this as a good October read for those who haven't picked this up yet. ( )

“Sharp Objects” can be best described as Midwest Gothic, as Gillian Flynn does for Missouri what Flannery O’Connor did for the South. Aside from the weirdness of the setting, the best part of the book is the narrator. Camille isn’t a Poirot or a Holmes, flitting between mysteries removed and uninvolved. Instead, she’s inextricably linked to the story, and to her hometown. Because the protagonist isn’t some neutral audience surrogate to project on, it feels more like a real story about real people, as ridiculous as the actual events get. I like that she’s unlikeable, particularly one scene where she says some misogynist things to cover up for some underlying traumas which I won’t spoil, she’s not doe-eyed like most women in mystery novels and I respect Flynn for telling a story that lets women be as fucked up as the men are.

“Sharp Objects” itself has a compelling premise, but it really lags in the middle, as hundreds of pages go by without advancing the story at all. Some writers can get away with this, but I don’t think Flynn is a good enough writer for that. How many scenes of Camille going to bars or having sex do we need? The same story, and it is an interesting story, could have been told better with a little brevity. The first-person narration also really got on my nerves. The style often felt juvenile; I hate to use the cliché “show don’t tell” but that’s some advice this book needed sorely. If you’re going to use first person narration, please don’t tell me exactly how the character is feeling, it’s just not believable! ( )

I found Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn terrifying as this story felt like it could actually have happened. This is an extreme view of mother/daughter relationships, and in this case the psychopathic mother was able to damage three daughters, all in different ways but each equally tragic. The story is narrated by Camille who, upon the death of her sister, started cutting herself at 13. Her cutting developed into the writing of significant words all over her body. She is now in her early thirties, a newspaper reporter who has been sent back to her hometown to write about an a couple of gruesome murders that have two young girls as victims.

As Camille gathers information about the murders, the victims and their families, she also is becoming reacquainted with her own dysfunctional family and becoming more and more concerned about her younger step-sister, Amma. Although thirteen year old Amma is very precocious and can be very mean to others, Camille is afraid that her mother is making Amma and herself ill in order to nurse them while appearing to others to be a loving and concerned mother. As one nasty revelation after another is revealed, Camille believes she not only knows who the murderer is, she also knows why these particular young girls were targeted.

Sharp Objects was a spell-binding read, a whodunit that allows the reader to work out the details and fill in the missing pieces as the action mounts. There are moments of back-stabbing rage, cloying and false affections and out and out viciousness. This book is also a dark and revealing look at how mothers don’t always belong on a pedestal and small towns aren’t always safe places to raise a family. ( )

I usually like this type of book as it deals with a plainly troubled protagonist. Camille Preaker is a journalist at a small newspaper in Chicago. She is assigned to write a story about two murders of pre-teen girls in her hometown Wind Gap, Missouri.

In the process of her journalistic investigation she is forced to come to terms with the past she thought she left behind. Her cold mother Adora, her half sister Amma, and the ghost of her dead half-sister Marian. Her dysfunctional home life, was a source of many of her problems, which quickly unfold in the telling of the story. The dysfunctional town is also revealed in the process of investigating the murders.

It is a page turner with excellent build-up of tension, as the whole evil of the crimes unfolds. The resolution when it comes will make the reader gasp with disbelief. Is it really possible to have so much evil concentrated in one place? or is it really the fault of eating too much medicated and hormone-grown hog, from the farm that employs half the city? Perhaps the author wants to make a subtle call for vegetarianism. Good fun book if you like the twisted and weird.
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