Dark Places

Gillian Flynn

2009

345 pages

From the back cover:
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, when the Kill Club, a secret society obsessed with notorious crimes, locates Libby and pumps her for details-proof its members hope may free Ben-she hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history.  For a fee, she'll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club.  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.

Gripping!  Genererally this is not my type of book but my husband picked it out from Barnes and Noble(he's into the three for the price of two member deal) and I'm sure this heading on the back helped [Named one of the best Books of 2009 by The New Yorker]-my husband loves The New Yorker.  He begged me to read it so we could talk about it-he liked it that much.  I read it in 2 1/2 days because it is a thrilling, alternating chapters book to read.  You get to know all these different angles and I couldn't put it down. And even though the murders were gruesome to read about I didn't get scared, really-just emphathetic to the characters involved. 

Random quote:
I steal underpants, rings, CD's, books, shoes, iPods, watches. I'll go to a party at someone's house-I don't have friends, but I have people who invite me places-and I'll leave wearing a few shirts under my sweater, with a couple of nice lipsticks in my pocket, and whatever cash is floating inside a purse or two.  Sometimes I even take the purse, if the crowd is drunk enough. (52)

My husband has become a fan of Paperback Book Swap as well and he quickly located a copy of Sharp Objects, Flynn's first book so we have that on our to-read pile now.  His pile is not as big as mine by any means but just the fact that he now has a pile is a fantastic coup for me.