Dark Places Review - Becca In A Book

Summary:

Libby Day was a child when her mother and her two sisters were murdered. Her brother was the killer or was he?

My Thoughts:

Wow just wow. This book sounded amazing from the summary, but it was much more than I expected. I am a huge Gillian Flynn fan. I first read Gone Girl, but I have loved this one and Sharp Objects much more! Her characters are flawed, unreliable, and very real and her stories are very dark and creepy and this book was no different.

Libby Day is not what I expected at all. Yes, she is a survivor, but she has been basically living off the spoils of her family’s murders. She is also a kleptomaniac and basically a leech. When her accountant tells her that she is running out of money, she decides to look into her family’s murders not to find out more, but to profit from it. I loved that Gillian Flynn didn’t give her a characterization that we would expect.

She is also extremely honest about who she is and never tries to hide it from anyone. She has definitely blocked out the murders and tried to move on, but the world didn’t let her. When she grew up, everyone kind of forgot about her and she never really learned how to survive on her own. This made me think about my own obsession with serial killers and murders. I unfortunately am like a lot of the characters that follow these cases with a similar obsession. It kinda made me look in the mirror and feel a little bit ashamed of how I think about these cases and the people involved.

I also really enjoyed the satanism element because I have studied how serial killers use this religion as an excuse to do their horrible deaths and don’t actually believe in it at all. The author used this detail to expose the hate and prejudice that community felt towards the Day family. It also showed how little effort the police put into the investigation of the murders and what actually happened that night. People fear and hate things that they don’t understand and it was very evident in this book.

The twists and turns of this book were so amazing! There were so many different suspects that could’ve done the murder and the way the author slowly revealed the mystery was amazing! The book goes through the past before the murders through Ben and Libby’s mother, Patty’s, perspectives and the 25 years later through Libby’s perspective. This provided insight on all aspects of the murder and allowed the mystery and suspense to remain constant and fresh.

Ben Day is the most interesting character of the book in my opinion and I really liked reading his chapters the most. He is a teen from a girls only family that struggles to find himself through drugs and a bad crowd. He wasn’t at all what I thought he was going to be, such a great Gillian Flynn character. Patty Day was a complex character as well and the struggle that she went through was so hard to read. I felt the most sorrow for her and her experiences.

Such a wonderful read full of family secrets and terror. Definitely add it to your TBR list!