Sharp Objects

Gillian Flynn is known to many as the “Gone Girl author”. This is hardly surprising, considering the immense global success of both the novel and the movie, which was released in 2014 and swept that year’s awards ceremonies clean.

With the exception of Gillian Flynn’s die–hard fans, and murder mystery fanatics, the author’s debut novel – Sharp Objects – seems to have faded into insignificance in comparison to Gone Girl, which is still widely talked about and praised, even after being on the shelves for over three years. As a besotted Gillian Flynn reader, who devoured Sharp Objects multiple times before Gone Girl, this is something that upsets me greatly, because in my opinion, Sharp Objects is hands down the best Gillian Flynn novel to date.

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town.

Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.