Visiting the Darkest Places

Gillian Flynn may be best known as the author of Gone Girl, but her novel Dark Places is just as compelling.

Dark Places is set in a tiny Kansas farming town. Libby Day is the only surviving witness of a massacre that claimed the lives of her mother and her two sisters. Her brother Ben was convicted based on her testimony, but many people think that seven-year-old Libby was coached into saying what the prosecutors wanted to hear.

Libby has mostly kept to herself since the killings, but is coaxed into meeting with members of the Kill Club when she finds herself in desperate need of cash. The Kill Club considers themselves to be amateur detectives and they offer to pay Libby for information regarding the case.

The more Libby works with the group, the more she starts to doubt her memories of that dreadful night. In her quest for answers, she visits Ben in prison for the first time and seeks out the alcoholic father who abandoned the family shortly before the killings occurred.

For me, Gone Girl started off slow and picked up as it went along. Dark Places kept my attention all the way through. The ending is a little hard to believe, but it certainly qualifies as an interesting plot twist.

A movie adaptation of Dark Places starring Charlize Theron as Libby Day will be released in theaters on September 5, followed by a film adaptation of Gone Girl on October 3. Both films are predicted to be hits, so you’ll want to start reading ASAP so you don’t miss out on any of the action.

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