Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

28 reviews

samflowerv6's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A masterpiece

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)” 

“There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.” 

“Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.” 

“It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.” 

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rakizaka's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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jessie_roz's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0


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cammiem8's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

The “cool girl” excerpt and the about face turn of the reveal at the half way point of this novel are some of the most brilliant bits of writing I’ve ever experienced in the thriller genre. 

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singalana's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75


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morganegrant's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5


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bugthebard's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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readsandrants's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Well I have to give it to Gillian Flynn, she created a cast of characters that I throughly despised. There were multiple times that I wrote in the margins that I wanted to burn the book because it was just making me feel too many different things that I hated.
There’s a user on goodreads who perfectly explained exactly how I feel about this book but I’ll briefly explain it here: amy is so perfect you want to puke,
the couple goes from “I love you” to “I hate you and I’m framing you for my murder” and “I hate you and I’m constantly thinking about killing you”
, the couple is just really irritating in general, and the ending makes you want to throw your book at a wall.
I thought the whole time that maybe Justice would be served but we got a baby instead.
And the fact that Amy was so methodical and well planed but suddenly she’s robbed, believes that two faked interviews are real and that her husband loves her, AND is basically held captive by desi (she couldn’t leave the house because he had the password for the gate, but I acknowledge she wasn’t held “captive” in the way she claims).

It was just really frustrating to see how this entire book played out in the end.
Nonetheless, I think this was a good read, albeit a quite frustrating one, but I think that was kind of the purpose of it. I just felt like there was some loose ends that personally I needed to be tied up before it ended.
3 ⭐️ 

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