In the midst of losing my mind ...

In the midst of losing my mind with the stress of work obliterating my senses ... I am reading a story about a man who loses his woman. Literally, like she's gone. Hence the name of the book: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I have already reviewed Flynn's second book on here, Dark Places. Her second book was entrancing. It pulled you in to a truly despicable world with really despicable people. People that make your skin crawl, and your stomach ache, and who really you just want to backhand for being so disgusting and low. Low people. There wasn't much love in Dark Places, just a chilling reminder that what you think you know can be taken away from you so fast.

In Gone Girl, we experience a man, Nick Dunne, who comes home to find his wife missing on their anniversary. We soon come to find out that these people have a history of messy anniversaries. Failing anniversaries. Anniversaries filled with too much expectation, and too little hope and happiness. On the one hand we hear from Nick who is reeling from the discovery that his wife is gone, a messy struggle left behind in their Missouri house, and then we hear from the diary entries of his missing wife Amy, who we soon come to find out is really just trying to look on the bright side of things (that must be hard for a New Yorker ... just kidding), but even as she really is trying to be the best wife she can be, she keeps messing up in Nick's eyes, and she can't figure out why. After both Nick and Amy lose their jobs, they scuttle off to the midwest, leaving their New York luxuries behind. With Amy missing, Nick has a lot of soul-searching today.

This seems to be (I just passed the 100 page mark) a book about "who did it?" but the focus really is on the relationship between these two characters, as if their love life has made Amy's disappearance a thing-coming.

So far, I like the book. I don't love it yet, I'm waiting for it to pick up. This was soon as one of the hottest books on summer 2012's reading lists (according to Cosmo magazine). I have high expectations, we'll see if they're met.