I just think some women aren’t made to be mothers. And some women aren’t made to be daughters.

Sharp Objects is an absorbing story. To say Camille, the narrator and protagonist, is damaged is an understatement. She’s a cutter, who does not even seem to realized how sexualized and troubled her adolescence was. Her relationships with every other character gives the story its flow, and obscures the truth until the final pages.

Is Sharp Objects as good as  Gone Girl? No, but here’s a confession. I read the second half of Sharp Objects while flying and I felt physically ill for much of the flight. I tried to blame taking my Dramamine late, but I didn’t. Sharp Objects was just that absorbing and upsetting, which I think is pretty high praise. Recommended.

3.5ish

I totally thought I had this one figured out but I TOTALLY DIDN'T. My face re: the teeth thing is like :O

3.5 stars rounded UP because I zipped through this and, well, it’s Gillian Freaking Flynn

As always: twisted storytelling; fast-paced; great build-up; impeccably constructed characters.

However: slightly disappointing/unsurprising “twist” followed by a rushed epilogue that turned what could have been a dramatic ending into an anticlimactic, glossed-over finish.

However, however: still a worthy read! Fans of this author should not pass this up.

3.75 stars

Gillian Flynn has got the most direct brutal writing style I’ve ever seen!

This book was heavily disturbing, disgusting, and seriously messed up. It made me feel nauseous, I had to stop reading multiple times because I was so uncomfortable, and it gave me nightmares because as messed up as this might sound I was so freakin scared of a thirteen years old fictional girl!

This book wasn’t easy to read at all. It has trigger warnings for nearly everything! Despite how a major part of the book was predictable, how I hated and was scared of everyone (I mean I love complex characters, but those were seriously messed up), how nauseous this book made me feel, and how I refused to believe that most of the things that happened here are realistic because no no there is no way those things are normal, thirteen years old girls don’t do that! I refuse to believe that. I still consider it a good book tho because of the writing style. It was just so disturbingly good! Now I just wanna set in the corner and cry.

if insanity could be summed up in a book it would be this one.

Hace unos años leí Perdida que me encantó pero esta, su primera novela, más, mucho más.
Se trata de una ópera prima muy sobresaliente. Con una carga emocional muy potente.
Por lo que narra y cómo lo narra.

Tenemos por un lado a Camille Preaker, la protagonista principal, que viaja a su pueblo natal, Wind Gap en Missouri, para cubrir una serie de asesinatos atroces a dos menores.
Y en su viaje para esclarecer los hechos junto con Richard, un policía que mandan desde la ciudad de Arkansas al estar más versado en este tipo de crímenes, se reencuentra con Amma, su hermanastra adolescente. Y su autoritaria madre, Adora. A las que hacía la friolera de ocho años que no veía.
Desde ahí empezamos a ver los entresijos de sus relaciones, su toxicidad, que casi se puede respirar a través de sus páginas.

Con un lenguaje directo y a veces hasta sucio nos lleva de la mano de Camille hasta sus más recónditos miedos.
La voz en primera persona a mi personalmente me encanta, hace que me meta en la historia con más facilidad y le otorga más profundidad a lo narrado.
Aquí todo el peso de la trama recae en las féminas, los hombres son solo meros figurantes.

Es de esos libros que dosificaba su lectura porque no quería que se terminara.
Hay que ir saboreándolo poco a poco, y te va calando de una manera bestial.
Pero a medida que venía el inevitable final, lo hacía con el estómago encogido.
Qué dolor

3 stars

n  

"Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed."

n

Aaaand on that note, welcome all to Episode 2 of Quickie Review with Valliya. Before we start, I must issue a few trigger warnings for this book: drugs, alcohol abuse, harming oneself, sexualising children.

Gillian Flynn's debut novel is a peculiarly addicting one. With an atmospheric, grotesque prose, Flynn's novel inserts you right into the plot and reveals things systematically, about Camille (the main character), the mystery, the town. This strategy works well in creating a tone for the plot involving a reporter coming back to her home town after being released from a psych ward to find herself in the middle of a murder investigation surrounding two young girls who had their teeth removed post-mortem. Flynn's writing is most reminiscent of Stephen King's, where he describes the world in a very raw way, almost as if he were writing about a caricature of life. However, where King spends a lot of time in the exposition (pre-conflict I might even say) to build up his characters, Flynn throws you right into the middle of the plot and reveals things about character and mystery slowly. Thanks to this creative choice, Flynn gives the novel a unique feel of a good blend between a character and plot driven story. My biggest qualms were that at places foreshadowing didn't exactly hit rightly at places, and that some threads weren't exactly explained/resolved when I felt they should have been All in all, I do recommend this book to perhaps less experienced, but mature, people who might want to give this a try.

Snappy Spoilers:
- I am confused as to why Adora (the mom) bit the baby that one time...
- Richard forgetting about Camille kind of felt stupid for me, as there was so much set up, with so little pay-off; on the other hand, that is what life is like sometimes, so I guess, make of this what you will
- Marian's case wasn't foreshadowed enough. Instead of talking about the sleeping with Camille, time should have been spent describing her illness and the peculiar circumstances surrounding it
- John and Meredith situation: didn't get a resolution
- I guess I wanted to see a bit more of the fallout than just three pages of epilogue
- Loved the reveal with Amma (also, I love the ironic name "Amity")


Thank you all for joining in for Episode 2 of Quickie Review with Valliya!



Previous episode: Silent Spring - Rachel Carson ★★

Next episode: The Dead Zone - Stephen King ★.25

I don't even wanna talk about it. This book was so problematic. The characters were messed up. The plot was messed up. And honestly- why does this book even exist?

➡️ There were things I really would've preferred were less graphic and just made me super uncomfortable like animal slaughtering, mentions of cutting and carving skin etc

➡️ The main character, she was okay in the beginning, then she said something and I was uh-oh, no ma'am, we don't like you. So according to our mc, if a girl (a 13 year old in this case) gets drunk and r@ped by six men, it is her fault for making stupid decisions. That's what our fmc believes.

➡️ The author has showed thirteen-year-olds being drug addicts and getting passed around between guys and just so much inappropriate stuff that i hated.

➡️ Overall, it was so messed up and so weird. The mc used to keep her mother's eyelashes safe and used it to tickle her lips and cheeks and there's this one scene where the mother literally grabs her daughter's head and licks it. And just ew no. I'd rather not see this book ever again.

*permanently erases from memory*

The more I think about this book, the more it bothers me. It's maddening that Flynn is a truly good writer. When I say good, I mean that I could not put this nauseating, disingenuous piece of shit down, even though I really wanted to.

Clearly Flynn could have written a very good book. Instead of reaching for art, she reached for sales, and she got them. She also got raves from Stephen King and several other popular writers who, like him, used the adjective "nasty" to praise the book. Apparently that's a compliment now.

Flynn was smart enough to figure out that the only way a woman could get top sales in the psychological thriller genre would be to write a book in which all the major female characters except the pathetic and infantilized protagonist are vicious and sociopathic.

Ka-ching.

Cruelty is fetishized here. The importance of kindness is given lip service, but the only characters who are kind are flat as pop left out for three days. The cruel characters are carefully and lovingly formed, complex and intensely human.

Reading this book was like watching a scavenger meticulously pull bits of flesh off a piece of road kill.

I guessed whodunnit in the first twenty pages.

On the up side, the vivid descriptions of the pig farm have made it impossible for me to continue to eat meat.

Actual rating 4.5/5 stars.

My love for Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl had me hesitating for a long time over whether I should pick up some of her earlier work. I was unsure whether they could compare with their predecessor, with half a decade having passed between her debut and, arguable, her most well-known publication.

I quickly found I need not fear, as I was transported into a whirlwind plot of just as many secrets and lies stemming from the mouths of just as many unlikable and messed-up characters. Flynn fortes in making me love to hate and hate to love her creations: even as I am vying for their destruction a murkier place inside of me is eager to read of their next transgression, taking some sort of sick glee in seeing their dark deeds play out across the pages.

This book is formulated around a myriad of unhealthy relationships, and I feel I can relate in how sucked-down-the-rabbit-hole crazy this made me! There is little redeeming light glanced upon any of the characters, the plot only gets more muddled with trickery and lies as it continues, and even the ending delivered another twist to the already tangled narrative. All of those aspects kept me glued to the pages, relegating all other responsibilities for another time, and entirely absorbed in this fucked up story line to end all other others.

this is what my sleep paralysis demon reads at 3 am.