Wow! This book was intense! I listened to this on audiobook, and it was excellently narrated by Julia Whelan and Kirby Heyborne. After listening to this each day I was literally exhausted, both physically and mentally, from the drama in Nick and Amy Dunne's marriage![a:Gillian Flynn|2383|Gillian Flynn|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1232123231p2/2383.jpg] taps into the ugliest, darkest, most infected places in marriage and mercilessly drags those demons snarling and snapping into the light. There is resonance to Amy and Nick's marriage that is absolutely terrifying. Flynn's ability to continually manipulate and shift the reader's feelings and perspectives with regard to her two main characters is brilliant craftsmanship, and that made this story even more raw.
This book almost made it to five stars for me. The only reason this fell to four stars is because it did start to really feel a bit long in the last quarter of the book or so. This is a story that is hard to "really like," because it is dark, dark, dark, and there is not a shred of happiness in here. Good people lose, bad people win, and nobody, including the reader, comes out unscathed. But as far as dark, dark, dark stories go, this one was incredibly well written. It's a nail-biter, it's a mirror, and it's something that you want to run from in terror. But when it's all done, you know that it's never going to let you go.