Review: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Title: Sharp Objects
Author: Gillian Flynn
Publisher: Broadway Books
Release date: September 26th 2006
Reading level: Ages 18 and up

Rating: 4.5/5

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Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows, a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming. 

In the months October and November I read several thrillers and Sharp Objects is among my favorites of them, because the plot hooked me from the beginning and it has very good twists and turns, although it was disturbing and had quite dark parts, it´s a very good book.

And as I am of the idea in regards to the books of the genre thriller-mystery that the less you know the better, I will not go into much details.

Camille is a thirty-year-old reporter, whom after several years away from her hometown, returns to cover for her newspaper the disappearance of a 10-year-old girl and the murder of another 9-year-old girl that occurred months earlier, and instead of going to a hotel, she stays at her mother´s and stepfather´s house with whom she has a difficult relationship, especially her mother. Once there, she begins interviewing both the local police chief and the parents of the girls, but in general she finds resistance from the police and the parents of one of the girls, as they don´t want to talk to her, so her stay lengthens until she gets the story and she approaches certain important people near the victims, but while all this happens, Camille remembers the reason why she didn´t want to return to her home town, besides meeting for the first time her 13-year-old half-sister. The problems she is having with her coverage, coupled with the problems she has with her family, make her personal demons reappear.

Sharp Objects is a rather dark thriller novel that is sometimes quite graphic in details and has disturbing scenes that can be uncomfortable and somewhat chilling and creepy, with a plot that is not pretty and with a shocking ending, but overall is a really good book. I highly recommend it.