Gone Girl - Das perfekte Opfer (Gekürzte Fassung)

Geschrieben von Gillian Flynn

Erzählt von Christiane Paul und Matthias Koeberlin

"Was denkst du gerade, Amy?" Das habe ich sie oft gefragt. Was denkst du? Wie geht es dir? Wer bist du? Wie gut kennt man eigentlich den Menschen, den man liebt?
Genau das fragt sich Nick Dunne an diesem sonnigen Morgen seines fünften Hochzeitstages, als seine Frau spurlos verschwindet. Die Polizei verdächtigt sofort Nick. Amys Freunde berichten, dass sie Angst vor ihm hatte. Die Polizei findet immer mehr Indizien, die Nick belasten. Was geschah mit Nicks wunderbarer Frau Amy?

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: Argon Verlag
• Erscheinungsdatum: 22. Aug. 2013
• ISBN: 9783839812518

Rezensionen für Gone Girl - Das perfekte Opfer (Gekürzte Fassung)

[elizajane_1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Reason for Reading: I loved Flynn's Dark Places and was excited to read another book by her.I was excited to read this as I had enjoyed Dark Places very much and have seen the reviews for this popping up all over the place; while not reading them, I was taking note of the 4 & 5 star ratings. I have to say I was a bit let down from my expectations. As I started reading Part One, I just really didn't find myself all that intrigued as I couldn't ge over how the events mimicked the Scott Peterson case item by item so of course I knew that meant the husband wasn't the killer because what kind of book would that be? So no suspense as everything was expected as it unraveled in Part One and I had thought of a few ideas as to what may be going on and was not shocked at the twist that came with Part Two. Basically, the whole plot of the thriller didn't *thrill* me. Now, I won't say I didn't enjoy it as I did once Part Two was under way, but I was underwhelmed.Secondly, the two main characters, both the husband and the wife, I found completely repulsive. I didn't like either of them as people and was unsatisfied with the ending. I connected with the sister, Go, but it just isn't that compelling to read a crime story about people you don't care for. So overall, while the plot had twists and kept me reading to find out how it all turned out in the end, I found this book to just be ok.

[erika.d · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

This is a good book! I do not normally read suspense/thrillers but it came highly recommended that I read this one. I couldn't put it down. This is a page turner with a satisfying ending. I was on the wife's side the whole story!

[lucaconti-1 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

I couldn't stop reading

[aeshamali · Bewertung: 1 von 5 Sternen]

I cannot stand this book. I still get mad when I think about how I read this all the way through; I should have stopped, but I didn't think it would be that bad. There closest to likable characters in this book were the sister, the attorney, and a former victim of our titular Girl; everyone else was vapid, self-centered, disgusting examples of human beings. This was given to me by someone else, and I would have been even more pissed if I'd paid money for this book.

Amy's parents are completely obtuse assholes who use their daughter as the basis for their best-selling book series in such a way as to shame her when she makes choices they don't agree with. When they lose everything due to their irresponsible actions throughout their life, they turn to said daughter to save them.

Nick is a complete jerk who for some reason thinks it's a good idea to open a bar in his hometown using the remainder of his wife's wealth. Lacking excitement and tired of his life, he foolishly begins a relationship with one of his students--which is disgusting enough to begin with given the power differential, but I may especially sensitive to this given that I work in a university and this is an absolute no-no.

And of course, Amy. Who likes nothing more than seeking revenge on those who she perceives have wronged her in some manner, or whom she has grown tired of. The "amazing" woman who cares for no one but herself, but wants others to be equally as enraptured as she is with herself. The chameleon who blames others for her plight and dissatisfaction with her lot, yet feels so flippant about her life that she is willing to give it up to have her revenge. The loathsome creature who feels no compunction at taking the life of another, regardless of how repulsive the man and his obsessive love for her was.

This book is one long story of lies, half-truths, and manipulations. The story itself is incredible--and by that I mean, beyond belief. I find it easier to suspend my belief for a story that is rooted in fantasy than one that purports to depict a "regular" person's life. The fact that all of her machinations could be so carefully planned, that so many pieces could be put into place in anticipation of the plot, is truly unbelievable. Once Amy chooses to return she works her manipulative ways to wrap her parents around her finger, as well as the public. She has lost some support of law enforcement, as her motive and sociopathy has become clear.

Yet just when you think that a satisfying end is near, that's when everything changes. Earlier in the book, Nick shares with us a seemingly insignificant detail that suggests one more reason why their future began to unravel, one more reason that the golden couple began to drift apart. This comes back as a plot twist to ensure that no one will receive anything resembling a satisfying end to this train wreck of a relationship. The impetus for this reconciliation, and the off-page ploy which brought it about, disgusted me more than anything in the rest of the story.

I had read Sharp Objects prior to reading this book, and while I didn't love that story I was truly excited to read Gone Girl given the rave reviews I had heard from co-workers, friends, and the rest of the world. My grad school cohort happened to pick this for the monthly book club, and I was quite excited because I actually already had the book as well as the time to read it to participate for once. I hated the book so much that I didn't even attend the book club meeting because I didn't want to think about it, or get angry. I don't know that I have ever had such a visceral reaction to a book before and certainly not since. I refuse to read a Gillian Flynn novel again, given the fact I didn't like either I read and the second is easily the least favorite book I have ever read. Amongst everything else, it made me feel depressed and I just didn't want that in addition to the anger and frustration it made me feel.

I will give this book one thing--it is compelling, suspenseful, and I found it hard to put down. However, if you are a person who wants to read a book with likable characters, this is not a book for you. If you like to read books with an actual heroine, hero, or even anti-hero(ine), this is not likely the book for you. But if you like dysfunctional characters, or narcissistic personality disorder intrigues you, by all means... but you may want to borrow it, just in case.

[readstolive · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

This is the most frustrating, upsetting book I have read in recent memory, and I have done nothing but struggle with the desire to throw my kindle across the room in the ten minutes since I've finished it. Several times I had to set it down and breathe various curse words to try and vent my frustration with these wonderful, terrible characters. Absolutely worth a read if only for that delicious, bitter ending - just my type.

[zoes_human · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

I totally enjoyed the schadenfreude of hating on awful people, but none of the big twists were surprising and the ending fell totally flat for me.

[1morechapter · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

(originally reviewed on 2-5-12)Wow. Just wow. Where do I begin with this? A married couple, New York transplants to middle Missouri, and the wife is missing. Told in alternating husband and wife voices, we are ever so gradually let in on the full story, and it’s a doozy. Until about halfway through, I thought there were 5, 6, or even more possibilities on what could have happened.This is more than just a regular whodunit for sure. It would be great for a group read because there would definitely be a lot to discuss. A quote:“It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters.And if all of us are play acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.I would have done anything to feel real again.”I really enjoyed the thriller aspect of this book. I haven’t read anything like this in quite awhile, so it was really fun to be entertained in this way. The only negatives I would say about the book is that it seemed like some of the story was taken from a real-life headline, and also there was some very bad language in it as well. Most people aren’t bothered at all about the latter aspect, and if you’re not then this will probably be a 4.5 – 5 star read for you.What a roller coaster ride!2012, 432 pp.****FTC Disclosure: I received this book courtesy of Netgalley and the publisher.

[imperfectcj · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

This was my post-Gulliver's Travels palate-cleanser read, and for this purpose, it worked just fine. It engaged me to the point that the night I started the book, I stayed up reading until almost 3:30 am. I stopped when I found---within pages of one another---two inaccuracies that I took rather personally in my addled middle-of-the-night state.The first was the oft-repeated "the rape never went to trial because she dropped the charges." Maybe things are different in New York state, but in the two other states where I've learned about rape laws, this is not how it works. The plaintiff in a rape trial is the state, not the victim. The victim is a witness for the state. She/he can neither press charges nor drop charges, but merely reports the crime and provides physical evidence and testimony for the state against the defendant. The fact that the character who said this was an attorney especially annoyed me. Had it been a non-legal-type person, I could chalk it up to characterization. But since it's from the mouth of an authority, I can only assume it's Flynn's mistake.The other inaccuracy came from a character who's not a professional in this particular field and so is a little easier for me to dismiss, but it still grates on me. The character uses a tourniquet on the character's arm (sorry for the awkward wording; I'm trying not to use gendered pronouns so as not to spoil any of the plot). I did some fairly rudimentary training as a first responder back in my 20's, and I remember being told that we should only place a tourniquet if the blood loss was bad enough that it was worth losing the limb. The paramedic who did our training explained that because a tourniquet is so effective at stopping blood flow, placing one is pretty much guaranteeing the death of the limb below the tourniquet. He taught us how to use pressure on the arteries at different pulse points to staunch blood flow without the risk of the death of the limb. As the character intended to retain the use of this limb and there's no evidence to suggest quick and significant blood loss, it would seem that a tourniquet wouldn't be a good choice in this situation.And then there was the twice-repeated insistence that an early-term fetus was a boy or a girl, something you can't tell until nearly halfway through a pregnancy without genetic testing. This inaccuracy was probably the least annoying to me, though, because the character making the assertion of sex has no qualms about lying, so I could chalk it up to that.Okay, so we've established that I take factual inaccuracies in literature pretty personally. But inaccuracies aside, this was a decent book. I'm not a huge fan of mysteries (especially ones that contain scenarios that are so air-tight no one can escape them...I just don't find this kind of thing plausible), so I appreciated that Flynn used the novel as an opportunity to comment on the nature of romantic relationships and especially marriage. She brings up some very interesting points about the acts we put on in the pursuit of love and acceptance and the feeling of belonging. Flynn addresses issues of vulnerability and plays out dramatically the reasons why we so often fear opening ourselves up even though vulnerability is crucial for any close relationship. She's essentially asked, "what's the worst that can happen if I let myself be vulnerable?" and then given us many examples of just what can happen when we trust one another (spoiler alert: they're largely not good things).Flynn also addresses the issue of compromise in a marriage. I think it's fairly widely accepted that a harmonious relationship requires give and take, and Flynn takes this idea to an extreme. What is the nature of unconditional love? What are we willing to give up for the sake of harmony? When do our differences become irreconcilable?And then there's what a marriage looks like from the outside compared to what it looks like from the inside. The private jokes we share and the little unspoken understandings that make up a close relationship sometimes look downright strange from the outside.These commentaries about marriage were especially satisfying for me to read. I didn't expect this kind of insight from a murder mystery; it was a pleasant surprise. I would have preferred if there had been more growth from the characters, but it was a fun read nonetheless.

[catellington · Bewertung: 1 von 5 Sternen]

Amy Elliott Dunne. Not so amazing.

Quizz:

Nearly everyone?including media journalists, celebrities, and members of the General Public alike?is talking about this supposedly great Gillian Flynn-penned novel titled "Gone Girl," a New York Times Bestseller List honoree, proclaiming it to be, in particularly one of many critiques: 'A Perfect Thriller!' and, 'An Incredible Media Satire!'

Considering well all of this lavish public praise, you:

A) Ignore the masses, dismissing their one-bodiment salutations of the novel as the typical "herd mentality."

B) Check out the novel's film adaptation, in order to come to your own conclusion as to whether or not you'd enjoy the book on which the film is based.

C) Buy the book first and read it for yourself - to find out, firsthand, if it really lives up to all of the worldwide commendation.

Answer: C


Normally, it wouldn't take me very long to read a novel of over four hundred pages. In fact, I could finish such a one in a matter of days. But where this Gillian Flynn-composed literary "mammoth" is concerned, the time of completion took all of two months: An indication of just how much I abhorred it.

Its pitiful monstrosity of a protagonist, Amy Elliott Dunne, is one of the most self-loathing, pathetic, insecure, immoral, hateful, spiteful, malicious, ugly-spirited, attention-starved, and low self-esteem-filled characters that I've ever read in any novel to date.

I utterly despised the fictive Amy Elliott Dunne. For she is a most pathetic instrument of evil if there ever was one created in fiction writing. There is absolutely NOTHING amazing about her.
And I simply cannot fathom what it is that the peoples of the world?the masses, if you will?admired so much about her. Character of Fiction or not.

Amy's real-life creator, Ms. Gillian Flynn, respectively, described, by way of a page in the book, the sociopathic principal character in this way: Perfect, rigid, demanding, brilliant, creative, fascinating, rapacious, and a megalomaniac. In my own personal opinion, Flynn dusted the troubled, sadistic bitch with powdered sugar, and then threw a cherry on top of her...for garnish.

I have nothing but the utmost execration for Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. And with that, I will not analyze it in further detail.

This book bored me. This book got on my nerves. This book made me sick to my stomach. And I couldn't wait to finish this book. For it left a "bad taste in my mouth" something awful.

Now that I've concluded the final chapter of Gone Girl, the urge to "cleanse my palate" is one of great strength. So to remedy the gnawing compulsion, I've carefully selected my next read. One that hasn't been publicly "exalted" and "revered" by the masses.

[monicai-1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

This was such a fun read. It's a gripping crime story on the surface, the kind that hooks you in and makes you impatient for the next episode, and below that it's also a very mean, very acute, merciless caricature study of individual and social ills and clich?s and biases. It also scatters little gems of thought-provoking commentary on issues like gender roles, both in form of over-the-top rants straight from the pen of the two "unreliable narrators", or more subtly woven into the story; little snapshots of small-town American life during hard economic times; a ferocious satire of popular opinion and media pandering to its worst instincts; and, something rarer these days, a very frank and brutal depiction of class differences and the way they shape different paths in life. Nice to see that in a writer who's not a British author for a change.
The language is snappy and clever, sometimes trying too hard, but always a pleasure to read. Lots of deliciously cruel quotable lines.
It feels like easy light reading, but opens up and leaves you with deeper tougher questions on identity and truth and ethics and the roles we play in life.
In short, a fun, gripping, clever and cruel crime story with more than one layer of food for thought. Nice combination. I sure will want to read more from this writer. (And very curious to see what parts of the story the movie version will be toning down, a lot I bet!)

[quaintlittlehead · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

I had heard great things about this book, but overall I found it a let-down. It starts out very slow; I had to read about 100 pages in before I felt like the action really started moving. Up until that point, it felt as if the author wanted to go through every mundane detail of police interrogation and investigation in real time. When things did finally get going, they never went in the direction I hoped. There are two main narrators, and both at some point speak directly to the reader, which just felt jarring, leaving me unsure what role I was supposed to play in the story: was I an eyewitness (and if so, why was I in both characters' heads)? Was I part of the investigation? Was I learning information about the case at a later date? I had no idea. But I think what bothered me most was that the book failed to appeal to my innate sense of justice. I grew to care about one of the characters and want that person to get what seemed right in the end. It never worked out. And the ending was so anticlimactic. The book just ends. The last few sentences fall completely flat. I turned the page thinking, "wait, what? That's it? After all I've invested in the journey with these characters, that's where they abandon me?" Nothing seemed fair, especially since I had to suspend belief to even buy into the premise of the book. The author seemed to want just a little too much to show off how well she had set up all the details so that the plot would work, and accomplished that by having her characters explain more than they experienced. The result was something like the long spiel an evil villain gives about all the details of their plot in a James Bond movie, while you're sitting there thinking, "okay, in real life you'd have just killed him already." If you read mysteries solely to see how smartly the author can surprise you while creating a plot you can't pick holes in, then maybe this will appeal to you. If identifying with the characters along the way matters to you, you might find this a disappointment. They don't get what they deserve, and I don't feel like I did, either.

[jolynne-4 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Now wasn't that an entertaining journey into the lives of privileged sociopaths!

[grlintrrptdrdng · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I have mixed emotions about Gone Girl. Warning, there will be spoilers. Before deciding to buy the book I read how people either really loved it or really hated, didn't see anything with pros and cons, just either or. The book kept popping up randomly for me so it was like alright I'll read it. I hated it in the beginning. New York couple that are the stereotype of a new york couple, Amy an annoying I'm a modern woman who is above all the regular wifey shit got on my damn nerves (this was before I knew...) Nick, a writer. Better get ready for the cliches and annoying similes and metaphors (THERE WERE TONS). And of course many red herrings and constant stream of characters being accused of doing something to Amy. I must say this was getting old, i wasn't even half way through the book and I was dreading the next half if it was going to be more of the same. I didn't particularly like any of the characters or give a shit what happened to them. It all changed when part 2 began. The Amy the reader got to know in the first part was a fake! Thank god right? No one can be that annoying and stupid about relationships. I still can't tell if the author was so good that he made fake diary Amy kinda off and strange, or he was so bad at trying to make her likable. My mind was blown. Sure I thought there was a good chance to she ran off on her own and made it look like someone took her (I'll admit, I didn't think she was framing Nick, I didn't think twice to doubt their version of the weirdos in her life in the past, I was expecting the killer to be Nick's father, clearly wasn't Nick even though the fake diary when it seemed real would point otherwise), but to actually frame him. This sparked my interest. This had me reading the book for hours straight. Sadly though, this part of the story also got drawn out too long. Everything that can go wrong went wrong for Nick's public image and plan on going to the cops. It always does when a author writes out the plan of the characters, something will go wrong where the plan can't happen. Fine. I liked how Nick tricked Amy, I like how the author was able to explain why Amy would fall for that, because in her mind who wouldn't want her. I absolutely hated and despise part 3. Amy comes back and tries to act like it was all coincidental at first? Nick lets go of his plan when he first sees her and confronts her even though she still has him by the balls? What the fuck? After everything that goes down, he actually forgets what she has done at times and falls in love with her again because they act like they are in love. She is so good that the police can't find any misstep, what about the obvious one that Nick mentioned at the station? How did she stab Desi if she was tied up? Such a sloppy ending to have only a few people question Amy's story and not connect all the coincidences at least to wonder why so many. The most annoying thing though is Nick's final attempt at a fuck you and freedom is a wash all because she has a hunch on what he is doing and happened to save sperm from him years ago before she even started this plan. Right.

I still enjoyed the book and it was a good read, it could of been better I was hoping for a much better ending than the one we got.

[rvhatha · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

A page-turner, for sure, but by the end I hated both of the main characters. Flynn has several interesting, Poe-esque plot turns, and ultimately seems to be dabbling in Poe's penchant for crazy narrators. But his characters still managed to generate empathy, or at least a few laughs, on the part of the reader. These characters do neither,

[rajivc_18 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

This is a dark book, and is a good one. Even though I gave it a 4 star rating, I felt that she could have done with 30 pages less. The section where she writes in Amy's voice, is where she comes alive, and Ms Flynn brings out the psychotic nature of Amy's personality beautifully. She also does a very good job with Nick. However, I don't know if another ending would have been better. There is a hint of menace in the last few lines. The only issue that I have, is that she seems to make Amy the perfect plotter, however, psychotic people do make mistakes. These are small quibbles, however. It is an engrossing and fascinating book, dark and full of twists.

[pathogenik-1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

This is the most well-written Flynn book of her three, the most 'mature' in a sense, and has incredible quotes. My take on it is that the plot's pace was quite slow in the first half, which made me want to stop reading it. As far as the story, I was NOT satisfied with the ending at ALL. It made no sense that since page one and until the last page, Amy won and got her way, that, for me, killed the thrill and the desire to see changes in the drama line.
The nicest surprise was after starting part 2, i did NOT see that coming, and it was a delicious feeling of 'gotchaaaa', very smart. It was actually then that I felt this is Flynn's style, finally i recognize her style and characterization.

[readerspeak_1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

This was a very well written book - I'll give it that. The characters were richly imagined and the fast-paced plot, surprises kept me reading. Did I like this though? Not at all. I despised the characters, despised the language. If it weren't for reading this for book club, I may have chosen to put it down just to get the characters out of my head.

[kdf_333_1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

really 2 1/2 starts cuz i really didn't like the characters and i wasn't that surprised by the "twists." but i liked it enough to read her other 2 books.

[ksimon-1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

My wife told me that Gillian Flynn is adept at writing books full of terrible, no good, awful characters, while managing not to lose the reader along the way. She certainly pulled that off here. Amy and Nick are beyond flawed: they're various shades of despicable, detestable and pitiful. And yet -- I was along for the ride the whole time, pulled this way and that as the author dangled various truths before me. Sometimes it would all become clear, and I'd see exactly where the book was going -- "oh, THAT'S what we've been playing at!" -- and then I'd be dead wrong. Surprise!

The novel does contain one or two scenes that didn't quite play out right, almost as though a paragraph or two were deleted by accident. That was only a minor distraction. The most damning thing I can say about Gone Girl is that I occasionally felt that it threatened to veer into "all women are..." territory, but the narrative succeeded in pulling back from the edge. Particularly since men aren't portrayed all that favorably, either. What a dark, dark tale.

Gone Girl is not a flawless novel, but it's the perfect Good Read.

[baochuan-1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

This contemporary drama has a lot of twist and turn. It is well written to develop the main characters, both are not all that likable and sometime down right scary. I am just not sure that i like the story due to the fact that it may be too close to home.

[salirce · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I had this as an ebook for quite some time and decided to finally read it. Once I started I could not stop, we're talking before work, during work, during lunch, after work. If I could have read while driving trust me I would have but it's required to pay attention to the road while maneuvering a vehicle. Here's when all hell breaks loose...at the end. I am at lunch, get to the end, call my husband, yell at him (he has no clue why), hang up, looked through the book to make sure there were first no missing pages or pages stuck together, called my husband back, yelled some more and after finally calming down, I deleted the book off my kindle reader (yes it's technically still there but trust me I felt less aggravated). About the book...girl meets boy, girl marries boy, girl becomes a psychotic, twisted, evil, conniving, drown the parrot in drinking water maniac. While she does have good cause to freak out, home girl took it to a whole other level. There's no need to be that disconnected to life and its surroundings. Personally I blame her parents. My suggestion, read when you're already frustrated at something so you don't have to go ballistic all over again.

[chndlrs · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

Engaging mystery, though I figured it out too early and that took away some of the fun.

[sarielle-2 · Bewertung: 2 von 5 Sternen]

DNF, read about 30%

I know that lots of people like this book but I have some serious problems with it. Mainly, this is totally not what I expected and, unfortunately, not in a good way.

I was expecting a great thriller about a missing woman that will keep me on the edge. Instead this is some kind of a story about a troubled marriage and two miserable people involved in a day-to-day problems, at least at the beginning (I heard that later in the story, there are some really disturbing features of the characters revealed). The missing of Amy serves just as pretext to tell about it all. Well, it's a well-told story to some extend but definitely not what I was looking for.

And what in my opinion totally kills the whole story is the abundance of retrospections. Every Nick's (Amy's husband and the hero of the whole novel) chapter (with what should be a present storyline - we will came back to that) is followed by the chapter of Amy's diary that starts with their first meeting. And even the Nick's chapters are not really about the search party or about the investigation but about Nick himself, his thoughts about this and that (including gazillion thoughts about Amy's character, actions and habits), his past and everything else. Don't get me wrong, I like to know my characters. But where is the thriller part, for God sake?! This novel is more like a close study on Amy and Nick.

And it really doesn't help that I don't really care about Amy or Nick. I don't hate them like some other readers, but I totally don't care. I don't care if Amy is dead or if Nick killed her after all. I just don't like them enough to care. I don't want to know them better, I want some action or suspense, instead I was given dozens and dozens of pages.

What I definitely didn't expect starting this book is that I will be skipping through pages. And I did! I can honestly admit to skipping through Amy's dragging chapters and through some of the more boring Nick's memories. You see, I started this highly recommended and rewarded bestseller and then somehow I have started and finished three other books in the meantime. And then (of course devoting all my time to this prize-awarded, excellent book) I found myself starting another three books and finished them too, because I so much wasn't into Gone Girl.

I wanted to like this book sooo much! It has so many enthusiastic reviews that I believed I would fall in love with it. Than I actually started the book and I just wasn't impressed, I was... bored (sic!). What a disappointment! I could have push myself to read this whole book, it is not bad after all. It isn't such a door-stopper, I would probably finish it. That is why I'm rating this book 2 stars even though I didn't finish it. I could, just wouldn't enjoy the process and with so many book out there, there is no point.

[shanaqui_1 · Bewertung: 2 von 5 Sternen]

Gone Girl is a compelling story, but one that didn't work for me. I felt like I got there first on a lot of the plot twists, that I expected them, and I didn't enjoy any of the characters. Normally I'm a fan of unreliable narrators, but there just seemed to be no solid ground with these people. Also not terribly a fan of the reviews that talk about the protagonists as typically or obviously mentally ill: yay for more stereotyping of mental illness in the mystery/thriller genre. I've ranted about it before and I'll rant about it again: your typical mentally ill person is more worried about whether they can drag themselves out of their flat to buy milk than how they're going to murder someone (or whatever else is amoral and violent).

I did, however, like the last couple of pages, because honestly? Those two deserve each other.

[hvanwillegen · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

A great crime/thriller that you won't be able to put down!

[kymmac · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

About a third of the way through (page-turner all the way) I began feeling sick to my stomach. Fortunately, at the second part, I was turned around and began enjoying it fully. Great untrustworthy narrators, and terrific shifting of alliances, likings, cheering sections. The ending made me laugh. Nick had the perfect ending, but of course the last chapter was absolutely necessary.Hats off! Read during week in Norwich, at BCLT summer school.

[littlebirdreads · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Sounds thrilling, right? I thought so. Plus, with Flynn's track record, I figured Gone Girl was bound to top my list of best reads in 2013. Unfortunately, that isn't exactly what happened....

Let's start with the good.... Ultimately, I did like the book. I may not have been totally blown away, but it was intense and interesting. I enjoy Flynn's writing... it is gritty and real. She is a strong writer and I think she does a good job developing character. Particularly in Amy- she did quite the job creating character for her. Those of you that have read it, you know what I'm saying here. Nick didn't have nearly as much depth as Amy, but I think Flynn still did a good job with him. Flynn did a fabulous job portraying both of them and altering them throughout the story which in turn allowed the reader to have many mixed feelings and pass judgement.

So here is what troubled me... Gone Girl was really hard to get into. I was not very interested and it did not hold my attention. Quite frankly, I was bored. The diary entries by Amy were dull and annoyed me (especially in the beginning). It was a good 100 pages before I was hooked, which in my opinion is MUCH too long. The other thing that bugged me was the flow- it was occasionally quite choppy, the way it swapped between narrators. Oh, and the ending. I HATED the ending... as in, chuck the book down and curse.

Overall, I ended up liking the book as a whole... it just took some time to get there. It was interesting and had a very Flynn twist to it. Even though I was super pissed off (no, really- I was angry about it) at the ending, I enjoyed the story as a whole.
Gone Girl is not a book I would recommend rushing out and buying... if you are interested, borrow from the library or a friend. You may like this book if you don't mind a slower paced beginning and plot framing. Those who enjoy a good mystery and a lot of twists would also likely enjoy this. Once you get into the meat of the novel, it does deliver.

[phinz_3 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

One of the best books I've read in 2013. Flynn is an amazing story crafter, keeping you in the dark at all times. Every time you think you've figured out what's going to happen she throws another curve ball at you.

[asawyer_21 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

What a story of psychoses! Finally read this because of all the hype. Very readable, but makes you thankful that you haven't run into characters like this in your life.

[begivens · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

This book was a great read as far as mysteries go and Gillian Flynn did a wonderful job crafting it. However, the main female character (Amy Elliot Dunne) is psychotic . Everything she says and does is honestly f***ed up. There were points I didn't want to keep reading because her actions were that disturbing. Also, it's just really hard to read a book in which the main character is annoying.

However, the ending was truly a surprise. A lot of the book was predictable if you're a mystery lover (or perhaps even if you've only dipped your toes in mystery novels). But there were enough twists and turns and truly gripping story development by the author that held my interest.