Gone Girl: She's just gone.

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Gone Girl Review

By Sithmi


This was a twist in the tale. You have your usual story, the whodunits where the woman is missing/dead and the husband is the prime suspect. But guess what? There’s more to it darling.

This well executed thriller with two POVs that had me wondering if this is where it ends in the last few chapters, because every line was a dangling hanger and I was quickly turning the pages to see if there was more.

Amazing Amy, our female protagonist, has gone missing, and left behind in the married couple’s house and perfect set of clues, besides the couple’s usual anniversary scavenger hunt clues. The clues seem to indicate more than just a disappearance. It indicates a murder.

Enter Nick, the husband and our male protagonist, who just walked back into a mess and has the unfortunate lack of facial expressions, because now he can’t he even show his shock and misery. Nor can he show the confusion of the clues left by his wife for their annual anniversary hunt.

Gillian Flynn opens a can of worms as the expression goes by diving deep into what it means to be married. It consists of compromise and sacrifice, insecurities and safety nets, and so many complications. Gone Girl explores these intricacies in a wholly different manner.

On one hand, we have the wife, smart, calculative, insecure and expectative. She wants back the man who cared about her, who wanted her, who put in the effort to keep their relationship alive. On the other hand, we have the husband, dull, slow, emotionless and pitiful. At least that’s how I see it.

But whilst I say these words to describe the immensely different but eerily close characters, I do not choose sides. I admire how well the author showed both sides of the coin, the POV changing to show us what went down through each of their eyes. It gives us readers time to choose who was the victim, who did the wrong thing, and who deserves punishment.

As we discover where dear Amy has disappeared and what her thorough plan is, we start to understand her side of the story, her motivations. She just wants revenge. And poor Nick is stuck dealing with the aftermath that she has laid out perfectly for him, as he unknowingly walks down the road leading to his eventual demise. Even when he knows what she has planned, there is no way to stop his secret relationship from coming out that’ll turn the public against him.

A plot twist arrives as a wrench is thrown into Amy’s plan. And then we quickly discover the extent Amy Elliot can go to when she has her mind set on a goal. She will always get what she wants.

The ending is the most interesting out of everything, when we see Nick might just not mind being tied to this ambitious woman. Because this life was not boring, was not typical. Because he wanted a woman that killed for him. Because she wants the man of her dreams and she’ll force him if she has to. Because that is marriage.

I love the book and even the movie because it stays true to the novel to its best. However, a crucial bit the movie missed was how the husband was just as powerful as the wife, if not in the normal circumstances even, seen clearly at the end of the book.

Writing Style rating: 4.7/5
Plot rating: 4.8/5
Total rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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