Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn 📕 REVIEW

A truly sharp crime fiction novel that keeps readers hooked up to the very last page. A small village filled with secrets and unwritten rules gets unsettled after the murders of young teenage girls. Everyone could be the murderer.

Camille works as a journalist at a newspaper in Chicago. She is sent to her hometown, Wind Gap, a village in Missouri, to investigate the murder of two little girls. She is not thrilled to go back there because she is still haunted by her traumatic childhood. Once she gets there, Camille is struggling to get rid of her need to feel accepted as she tries to deal with her distant mother, Adora, and her extremely popular and bossy half-sister, Amma. Richard, a detective from Kansas City, will help her with her investigation, but it is getting harder and harder for Camille to keep her mental health in check while in this place full of secrets. 

TRIGGER WARNINGS: alcohol abuse, self-harm

This is a book where three generations of complex women dominate the narrative. Camille is a self-destructive person who tries to come to terms with her need to feel loved. Amma, Camille's half-sister, is only thirteen years old, but she struggles to tame her cruel and violent side. Adora, the mother, is a distant and abrupt person. The mental health struggles, the obsessions and the deviant behaviours, that all three women exhibit, seem to derive from the lack of motherly care, love and affection. What is particularly interesting is that all three women react differently to their own trauma and feeling of not being loved. But they all desire the attention they did not receive.

The story is narrated through Camille's voice who tries to solve the case in order to write an article for the newspaper, meaning that along with her, readers try to understand who killed the two thirteen-year-old girls and why. Since everyone in Wind Gap is a suspect, it is interesting to see all the hypocrisy, the cruel gossiping and the lack of empathy that characterise most people living in this small community full of "old money and trash". Despite the economic prosperity of most of the characters presented in the book, locals are quick to judge others and they bully people who do not follow social or gender stereotypes. 

Although there are some well-played twists at the end of the book and you need to reach the very last chapter in order to get the whole story, I was not satisfied by the last page of the book. Compared to the atmosphere in the rest of the book, the end felt too hopeful. Maybe if we had a few more pages explaining the struggle of coming to terms with what had occurred and seeing characters trying to teach themselves how to live a healthy lifestyle, it would be more convincing. 

To conclude, Sharp Objects is a brilliant psychological thriller, which comments on the struggle of living both in a cruel community and in a toxic family. 

Favourite Quote: 

I'm here, I said, and it felt shockingly comforting, those words. When I'm panicked, I say them aloud to myself. I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. I feel like a warm gust of wind could exhale my way and I'd be disappeared forever, not even a sliver of fingernail left behind. On some days, I find this though calming; on others it chills me. (p. 121)

Rating: 4 / 5 💛