Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Published July 2007 by Crown Publishing Group
Source: I bought this one years ago after reading rave reviews from other bloggers

Publisher's Summary:
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 murders of two preteen girls. 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.


My Thoughts:
I don't know what horrible thing happened to Gillian Flynn in her lifetime but it must have been some really bad sh*(. She has one dark and twisted mind. Also, I'm left to wonder, after reading two of Flynn's books, what kind of people she has spent her life around. As in Gone Girl, Sharp Objects is filled with very, very unlikeable characters and people who have had very, very terrible lives.

To say that Camille is dogged by her own demons is a major understatement. She wears her demons over her entire body - as you might have wised up to by the cover art (although I, for some reason did not), Camille is a cutter. Raised by a mother who never loved her, a step-father who had little to do with her, and living in the very large shadow of the ghost of her dead sister, Camille has done some things in her life that make this a book not for the prudish or faint of heart.

Returning home to cover the story of a second dead girl in her home town, Camille unleashes not only her demons but her deepest insecurities and need for love and acceptance. When you know what's happened to to Camille, you be tempted to feel sorry for her. And you should; her mother is a horrible person and her sister is one nasty piece of work. But people make choices in the way they deal with the hand they are dealt and Camille has made some choices that are hard to get past. There is not, in fact, one person in Sharp Objects readers can thoroughly embrace. It's what makes Flynn Flynn. It's what makes her books hard to read and hard to put down.