Recent Reads: Sharp Objects (Book #20 of 2013)

If Coraline met me, I’m what she would call a “wusspuss”.
Basically, I am an emotionally fragile human being and this makes me a scaredy-cat.
In an attempt to battle this, I find myself watching disturbing, scary movies to prove to myself that I’m strong. Mostly, this results in nightmares and running from room to room at night for fear that something might get me if I’m not fast enough.

To make the decision to start reading crime/mystery novels was tough. I’m still trying to find the perfect Stephen King novel (that man is damn prolific and has horror and sci-fi and a zillion other types of books coming out the wazoo). I bit the bullet when I read Gillian Flynn’s much-hyped-about Gone Girl last summer (you can read my review on that here).
You see, for me, there’s a difference between watching a movie that’s over in 100 minutes or reading a book that will take about 5 days.
When I’m reading, I get very emotionally invested. And not just like in a movie, which also happens, where I can snap back in an hour and move onto the next thing in an attempt to cleanse my mind. Books stay with you, because they are basically unfolding in your mind.
There isn’t a visual to guide you…you create your own. So, to go into a darker place…well, that’s hard for someone who isn’t always tough enough to handle those kinds of things. Still, this is a challenge after all, and Gillian Flynn did me right that first time. So I went ahead, after a couple of YA (one of which was completely forgettable) novels, I dove into Flynn’s debut novel, Sharp Objects.

Let me just say this now: I LOVED THIS BOOK.
I loved it more than Gone Girl, though they shouldn’t really be compared.
I love Gillian Flynn’s writing.
I just loved it.

The premise:
Camille Preaker lives in Chicago as a not-so-successful reporter for a not-so-successful newspaper. Her boss hears about a missing girl in Camille’s hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, one that has occured less than a year after the disappearance and murder of another girl of the same age, and asks Camille to go back home and do some work on this possible serial killer case to add leverage to her career and their paper. The problem is, Camille doesn’t like home. Camille doesn’t like her mother. Camille doesn’t know her real father. Camille’s sister died at a young age, and she hasn’t gotten over it. Camille spent most of her teenage years cutting herself, using knives to carve words into her flesh, her body now covered in scars and words.  There are a lot of reasons not to go, but she goes anyway.
Not long after she arrives, the body of the missing girl is found. She was strangled and all of her teeth were removed…exactly the way that the first girl was found. Camille is immediately intrigued by the case, and dives head first.
In the meantime, she is struggling with her distant and cold mother, her mother’s distant and cold husband, and her strange, powerful, and beautiful younger half-sister.

I find that the less I know about the story, specifically with these crime and mystery books, the better. So that’s all I’ll tell you.
The very basic.

This book was so damn good. Nearly gave me a heart attack in the best of ways.
Gillian Flynn knows what she’s doing. I like her.
Highly recommended.

P.S. This is a cool essay that Gillian Flynn wrote about this book.
It doesn’t ruin the book, but I didn’t read it until after so bookmark it for later!