Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

With Gone Girl comes a new genre of writing--one where things seem one way, and then masterfully shift to show they were something different the whole time, like that picture where you think you are looking at a vase and then find you are looking at two faces, or is it still a vase? The lines are the same, but your perception is changed to see things in a way that, although they were right in front of you the whole time, you didn't see before. Girl on A Train also does this well, even with a drunken narrator.... In the case of this book, it's more like you are looking at a picture and then the drunken artist comes along and sloppily erases it and draws something else right in front of you, burps in your face, and expects you to be amazed. It's lazy, sad, flat read and I found it insulting to reader and the genre. That is to say, if you enjoy the mental workout of a twisty plot and trying to piece together what will happen, don't buy this book. If you find the exploitation of national tragedy distasteful, especially if it's done in a lazy way, don't buy this book. If gaping plot holes and flimsy characters bother you, don't buy this book. If there are any other books available to you, don't buy this book. I gave the book one star because there are a few funny parts, but overall I found the whole thing barely readable. A character who seems to be tough and interesting in the first chapter devolves into a whiny, vapid victim with no redeeming qualities, and yet we are supposed to root for her and care what happens to her? Things that are already part of our collective fear and sadness as Americans are leveraged in a pathetic way, to make us feel by memory what the writer could not by skill. Things we are told about characters do not hold up throughout the book, leaving me confused and going to back to see if I missed something, but sadly we are just supposed to suspend disbelief enough to forget what we read a few chapters before. By the last chapter, I was thinking something earth shattering had to happen to explain all of this...at that point I was so underwhelmed that I felt like the author might even play the "it was all a dream" card, but no, the biggest trick was done by the publishing house, who lured you in with the promise of Gillian Flynn-level writing on the book jacket and then, in a classic bait and switch, gave you something that was even sadder and faker than the lead character herself.