What readers think of Gone Girl, plus links to write your own review.

I love this book! What a story written by Gillian Flynn.
Great suspense about the missing wife, was she to blame, or not? Did the husband do it, or not? It is worth the read to find out!

Gone Girl is both a work of literary fiction and a page turner at the same time. It reminded me of the work of Patricia Highsmith. I feel like it could be a modern day Hitchcock film. Loved every page.

I adored this book..the writing, the twists and turns of the plot kept me up until 1am because I just wanted to keep reading..This one is a winner!

My daughter advised I read this book. I found the book riveting...as she said I would. I thought I had 50 pages left...and suddenly I was on the last page...with the worst ending I could have imagined. The characters were all losers in the end. Yuck! So glad I read the book so I don't have to watch the movie. Reminded me of the book "One Day".

Gone Girl is the break out novel by Gillian Flynn that has received a significant amount of press and adulation since it was published last summer. Gone Girl is what I term “mind candy”, a novel of suspense that also causes one to suspend all concept of reality. +

Gone Girl is written in three parts and attempts to portray the dark side of human nature in the psychological dysfunction of marital relationship after the wife disappears on the couple’s fifth wedding anniversary.

Amy Elliott and Nick Dunn met, courted and married in New York City. Amy came from a background of privilege and some notoriety as her parents had authored a series of books about “Amazing Amy”, which chronicled an idealized Amy through her childhood and school years. Nick grew up the only son of a middle class family in Middle America.

After Amy disappears, suspicion falls on Nick, because as the husband, he is the most likely suspect.

This was a quick read and I found the first half of the book to be a suspenseful page-turner. I like Ms. Flynn’s writing style. It flows well and I plan to read one of her earlier novels. However, none of the characters in this book are appealing. None are likeable. I felt no empathy for any of the persons portrayed.

By the time I was into the second half of the book, I predicted where the narrative was going and it lost me. While it was clever and clear that Ms. Flynn had conducted some research on sociopathic personalities, the story became too contrived, too convoluted, well beyond the most outrageous headlines of tabloid news. (except maybe “Batboy”). I’ve worked in insurance claims for more than 30 years and have seen a lot of things that one just could not make up. But, Gone Girl left me shaking my head.

Right up to the second-from-last page GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn should be rated 5. Every page of the book builds more and more tension. It really is the best kind of book: unputdownable.

But the end: Other reviewers have said that it comes as a surprise. True. But I didn't like it. It is as if Flynn couldn't think of an end to the story so just stopped.

The end should be rewritten.

If you're the type of reader who stops reading a book early on because it doesn't grab you right away, don't even bother with this one. The first half of this bestselling thriller by Gillian Flynn is so slow, it's almost boring. It's one very long set-up. And then about halfway through, whamo! The speed picks up, the plot thickens, and before too long, the story totally changes direction and yanks you on a roller coaster ride. Fasten your seatbelts, readers.

Nick Dunne and Amy Elliott Dunne are both stewing in a miserable, unhappy marriage. After living the good life in New York City—hot shot jobs, lots of money, the right house in the right neighborhood—it all disappears seemingly overnight when both are laid off within weeks of each other. At Nick's insistence, they move to his childhood home of North Carthage, Missouri, a small town on the banks of the Mississippi River. On the day of their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy disappears. As typically happens in these cases, many believe Nick is responsible. Is he? Did he murder his wife? Or is something even more diabolical going on?

The No. 1 strength of this book is the plot twists…one after another. And even those twists and turns I could see coming were still a page-turning exhilaration. This is a book you read with eyes wide open—even if it's way (way!) past your bedtime.

Like most thrillers, this one is plot-driven to the exclusion of all other literary niceties. Even so, it is more than a straight-up thriller: It's also a psychological study of Nick and Amy—and boy are they messed up. Both are meanspirited, selfish, coldhearted, and diabolical. As their loveless marriage and carefully cultivated professional lives unravel, their deepest secrets and flagrant lies devastatingly haunt and harm them. I give a lot of credit to Gillian Flynn, though. Even though I disliked both of them (a lot!), I still cared about them. That doesn't often happen with such characters.

But…and this is a big 'but." The ending is disappointing. VERY disappointing. It's as if Gillian Flynn just got tired of writing and stopped.

It took a certain degree of poking to get me to read this, and having done so, I wonder why I did. It's not bad - it's just utterly pointless. The story goes nowhere, the lead characters are without any kind of depth, just mechanistic extrapolations of the stereotypes from which they are carved. Is it about dishonesty, well, yes; but given the genre that isn't exactly news. Is it about revenge? Again, yes, but not in way that hasn't been covered in greater depth and passion many times before. Where it does work, at least to a degree, is as a critique of media reporting of murder and kidnap.

Once the big reveal is reached however, I wouldn't waste you time reading further; the ending is... pointless indulgent waffle. And that's being generous.

It avoids 1-star rating by being better than Twilight.