Book Review: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Publisher: Broadway Books
Paperback Release: 2010
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben. Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club—for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer.

Dark Places is Gillian Flynn’s second novel. I think it’s important when reading Flynn’s earlier books not to make comparisons to her amazing third novel, Gone Girl. Remember that Dark Places is her second book so one wouldn’t expect it to be as good as Gone Girl. That said, it was pretty darn good. The main character is Libby Day. When Libby was a child, her brother Ben was convicted of killing their mother and two sisters. It was Libby’s testimony that was instrumental in putting him away. Libby’s an adult now and lives her life walking around in an emotionless haze. It’s really hard to empathize with her because she doesn’t seem to feel sadness or anger about what happened – she’s just numb. I didn’t like her very much at all. But you don’t need to like Libby to enjoy this book. You probably aren’t meant to like her.

Lyle, a member of Kill Club, a group obsessed with real life murders, approaches her and suggests that someone other Ben killed her family. Libby is outraged – she saw what happened. Eventually, Lyle convinces Libby to help him investigate. She agrees so that she can prove to him that her brother is a murderer.

I’m usually pretty good at guessing the ending to thrillers and mysteries but not in this case. This book has so many twists and turns that my head was spinning. Flynn is so great at weaving a complicated plot together, keeping the reader confused (in a good way) about how everything fits together until the very end.

When Gone Girl was released three years ago, I had the pleasure of attending Gillian’s book signing in Kansas City. Incidentally, Flynn is from Kansas City. That’s also where Libby and I live so it was fun reading about real-life landmarks that are in my city. Libby’s hometown of Kinnakee is fictional though.

Anyway, at the signing, Gillian also shared some thoughts and answered questions about Dark Places:
• Dark Places started out as a fictional look at the McMartain preschool case in California. [If you look up that case, you’ll see that it ended up being just a small piece of Dark Place’s story.]

• In the first draft of Dark Places, Libby was supposed to be perky because she didn’t want another dark narrator like in Sharp Objects. She changed her mind after her husband read the first draft and said it was clear that she didn’t like writing Libby.

• She doesn’t start out knowing how a book will end. The twists and turns come to her as she goes. She writes her books five or six times!

• She said I was very attentive and had a friendly face so she looked at me a lot during her talk. [I already mentioned that in my review of Gone Girl but it can’t hurt to tell you again!]

My reviews of Gillian Flynn’s other books:
Sharp Objects
Gone Girl