I have to admit, I jumped on the Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn) bandwagon this past year when everyone was talking about it on Twitter. I liked it well enough, but I didn't necessarily "get" why everyone was in love with it, and wasn't as involved in the story as everyone else seemed to be. It could have been all of the hype, and it could be that I didn't connect with the story as much as I expected to. But now I can understand the hype surrounding Gillian Flynn's work, thanks to Sharp Objects, which a friend recommended. And I loved it.
Sharp Objects tells the story of a newspaper reporter sent back to her hometown to cover the recent disappearances of young girls in the hopes that it will become "the next big story" (according to her boss). She finds herself wrapped up not just in the lives and disappearances of these girls, but also the life and death of her younger sister. And as the story goes on, we see how her past, her relationship with her mother, and her relationship with her half-sister ties into the story of these girls, bringing everything together in an ending that I didn't see coming and couldn't stop thinking about for days.
What I liked so much about Sharp Objects was the constant surprises of where the story was taking me. It was darker than I ever could have imagined, but it was dark in a way that makes you think and cringe a little rather than darkness that seems forced or even over the top. The story was well-told and the characters were strong. They were flawed and we could easily understand their motivations, all culminating in the so-surprising ending.
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