Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - Gone Girl

Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

120 reviews

fiona_245's review against another edition

dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

It is a good book in the sense that it made me reflect about the main characters, especially Amy Dunne. It's not an easy read per se since it took me a while to get used to the layout per chapter, alternating between Nick's and Amy's POVs - which got exhausting for a while because I like to read about Amy's chapters better. Nick's more detailed and more on flashbacks and dramas while Amy's are getting progression each time she gets a chapter.

While Nick's such a jerk for cheating on his wife - on his student! how disgusting! - Amy's revenge is more fucked up. To think that she was pretending to be this cool girl for Nick all along for many years, and eventually got bored of the pretense and resented Nick for not taking a hint and wanting to get back on Nick for that matter.. that's just sooo manipulative and cunning, borderline psychopath (ironic na Psych grad iyang fam). Her finding out his husband cheating only fueled to her hatred and she devised a revenge to frame her husband for a nonexistent homicide.

Her revenge on her HS friend is brutal as heck, poor Hilary is victimized even though it's not her fault Amy decided to cut her off by blaming Hilary that she fell off the stairs (caused by Amy herself, to play victim). She even used her ex (forgot the name) in her desperation after her revenge escapade got ruined, eventually she killed him. A murderer.

Amy's a sociopath. Her seemingly perfect image is maintained using her devious, pavictim card. Her revenge is just petty, esp to Hilary, playing god and it's not even justified.

Overall, this book is really nice. It delved into a female character with questionable and borderline psyxhopathic/sociopathic behavior perfectly that I don't want to take anyone's sides.

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vaguely_pink's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense 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

4.0

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kenzieleevip's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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kassidypf13's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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marlisenicole's review against another edition

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tense slow-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

4.5

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marjoleinvanderspoel's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Okay so the cool girl monologue slaps, but the rest of the book is just vaguely uncomfy. Nick is such a misogynist and both diary Amy is annoying and "not-like-other-girls", something real Amy is also feeling, just more extreme. It's just weird to read a book like this in a post me-too era. Like we don't need another book about a psycho bitch tearing a perfect man down with her lies! But it was fun to read and it's not a bad book. So.

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hannahmg's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

0/1 overall
1/2 writing/structure/character creation
1/2 enjoyment

I would not recommend this book.

Overall I did not enjoy this book, the first 250 page were not needed and were poorly written, the last 50 pages were as bad as the first part of the book. I only enjoyed a small snippet of the book. The length of this triller is way to long and unnecessary. I felt like I was reading a first draft of a idea.

The writing was partly smart with good ideas but poorly done, the journal extracts giving us a unreliable pov which was smart, reminded me of Dracula, but this was done in a manner which made it worthless, more dialogue than actually description, this was so unrealistic it was unnecessary to make it seem like a dairy. Nicks pov was closer to a dairy than Amy's own dairy entries. The repetition was unbearable, -yes Nick we get it you have a mistress and she is young, very young, and pretty.
The character creation was immense and well though through, Amy and Nick are both so realistic but fucked up at the same time. This is one of the major reasons it is a two and not a one star review.

I thought there was a lot of unnecessary added details, the level of Misogyny and sexism was not needed and weakly touched on at the end. Specifically the character of Nick's father who has Dementia and becomes extremely misogynistic, with the use of the slur "bitch" in both his speech and Nicks thoughts. Why add this, I just think the book would of been fine without it and it didn't feel like a representation of any sorts but more a tick for the check list and even excusing the behaviour.

I was very disappointed in the trigger warning list i found (Storygraph). Yes it is a thriller, we should expect triggering things but at the end of the day the book should have a page of trigger warnings.

Content Warnings