Oh, Gillian Flynn. My heart, in some weird and disturbed way, beats for you in this myster/thriller/horror book set all over the home state I love SO much! It was, I have to admit, a bit titillating and surreal to see places I’ve been and know fairly well (KCK, KCMO, Lawrence, Topeka, etc.) described in a book that has such, well, creepy as all hell plot components.
Most of you, I’m sure, are familiar with the Lady Flynn’s most recent best seller Gone Girl. This book, with its dark and yet somehow nondescript book cover sat on the shelves where I work for, like, months, quietly whispering to me every day “you haven’t read me yet. You keep recommending me to people. people keep recommending me to you. Reeeeaaaaddd mmeeeee……” (the last part was always in some creepy, Jacob Marley voice, complete with chain rattling). But I didn’t want to. Mostly because the plot didn’t quite make me go all
But also because, you know, I refuse to read a book that a billion people and the whole universe is telling me to read all at once. I just can’t. It’s silly rebellion, but so was buying hundreds of dollars worth of Breakfast Club t-shirts and black rubber bracelets when I was a freshman in high school. But I did feel bad about continuing to recommend a book to others that I hadn’t read just because it was on the best seller wall (NO, FIFTY SHADES! I WILL NOT HAND YOU TO A SINGLE PERSON.), so I decided to compromise with myself and I read this book instead. And I LOVED it.
GOODREAD SYNOPSIS MAGIC:
Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her. The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details–proof they hope may free Ben–Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history. For a fee, she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club . . . and maybe she’ll admit her testimony wasn’t so solid after all. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the narrative flashes back to January 2, 1985. The events of that day are relayed through the eyes of Libby’s doomed family members–including Ben, a loner whose rage over his shiftless father and their failing farm have driven him into a disturbing friendship with the new girl in town. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started–on the run from a killer.
First of all, Lady Flynn has quite the mouth on her. Secondly. I was bat shit terrified staying up late and reading the chapters when Libby goes back in her own mind and describes what it was like to wake up and hear her family being murdered, only to run away and have to live with not only the survivor’s guilt but with the memories. I also want to give the Lady MAD PROPS for creating one of the few books I’ve read in a while that truly kept me guessing as to who the killer was, why the killer killed, and what this could mean for Ben, for Libby, and for the family that they both, in one way or another, lost. Libby was the kind of narrator that at once infuriated me – she refused to actually do anything with her life, instead excusing it all away because of what happened to her – while also making me feel sympathetic to this girl who lost her family, and then has to deal years later with all the possible “what if’s” that come with being that young and testifying in such an intense case.
The book also touched on some of the “darker” aspects of the legal system – what can happen when well meaning people encourage young people to say things that they feel the adults want to hear, and when the system has already made decisions about certain people in certain walks of life. It was frustrating to read, and was one of those situations where I felt myself going “THAT’S NOT FAIR! IF YOU ONLY KNEW THE TRUTH!” I found the ending to be surprising, although I will say that, probably about a dozen pages out or so I was kind of able to put it all together. BUT, most books don’t even string me along for that long. So I thought that this plot was really well done, and the plot twist was one that, as I understand it, is one of the Lady Flynn’s typical gusto storytelling maneuvers! Here here!
Rating: Hell yeah!
The Outlaw Life 