Today, I'm recommending an intensely disturbing yet compelling work of psychological suspense called Sharp Objects by the New York Time best-selling author Gillian Flynn.
You probably know Flynn best for her 2012 novel Gone Girl, and its subsequent 2014 film adaptation starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. But what you may not know is that GF's foray into the genre of psychological suspense didn't begin with GG. Her debut novel, Sharp Objects, is the one that started it all--and it's just as troubling, twisted, and torturously plotted as GG.
After two young girls are murdered in her hometown, troubled newspaper reporter Camille Preaker is forced to return to her childhood home for the first time in eight years to investigate the crimes. Fresh from a brief stint at a psych hospital, Preaker is reunited with her neurotic, hypochondriac mother and enigmatic, 13-year-old sister, whom she barely knows, as she works to uncover the truth about the killings.
Working out of her bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself interviewing old acquaintances and town newcomers, and soon is identifying with the young victims--a bit too strongly. Haunted by her own demons and history as a self mutilator, she must unravel the mystery of her own past if she wants to get the story and survive her trip back home.
If you can't get enough of SO, be on the lookout for her television series adaptation that is in the worlds, and try Gillian Glynn's other books, Dark Places and Gone Girl. These Thrillers and many more are available at the Sioux City Public Library.
Support for Check It Out comes from Avery Brothers.
Check It Out: Sharp Objects
