Dark Places

Dark Places
author: Gillian Flynn
published: May 5th 2009
pages: 349
my rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars














Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice" of Kinnakee, Kansas.” She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben. Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club—for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer.

Wow, this book was amazing. I've never read a book by Gillian Flynn before but everyone seems to be obsessed with them so I had pretty high expectations. Let me just say those expectations were definitely met.


Although Libby Day is the main character she isn't exactly likable. She's mean to people, doesn't want to get a job and just doesn't have her life together at all. But still over the course of this book I started to care for her and also pity her.
In fact, that was how I felt about a majority of the characters in this book. None of them are characters I would normally like but even though some of them are complete assholes, I still couldn't help to feel sympathetic towards them. Overall most of the lives the people in this book have can only be described as tragic.

The chapters alternate between Libby Day's , Ben Day's (her brother) and Patty Day's (her mothers) point of view. Libby's character is in the present while Ben and Patty's chapters are all from the day of the murders. But even though the book gave lot's of insight in the heads of multiple characters I still had no clue where the story was going most of the time. There was so much mystery surrounding the murders, although it all seemed quite clear in the beginning, that wanted me to keep reading and find out more. Since the murders are believed to have something to do with a Satan Sacrifice it all just got more mysterious and creepy. It wasn't really scary for the most part but it was suspensefull and everything about this story was dark and somewhat unsettling. There are so many suspects but the resolution was nothing I could have ever thought of and seemed really logical.

Probably the only thing that bothered my was how fast Libby believed that Ben might be innocent. I didn't trust Ben at all over most of the book and his chapters didn't change that either. I did feel really bad for him, I just didn't like how Libby just accepted that he might be innocent after believing he killed her whole family for more than twenty years.

Other than that this book completely hooked me. I thought about it a lot and even though it did take me way to long to actually get through it, I wanted to know what happened to all the characters and was really invested in the story.
I'll probably read the other books by Gillian Flynn soon as well and hope they are as good as this book. Highly recommend everyone to read it!