I don’t usually read buzzy commercially successful authors–but when I do I read them at least 2-5 years after the buzz has died down and nobody cares. I’m looking at you Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Fifty Shades of Grey and Girl on The Train. I’ll get to you. . . eventually.
Instead of picking up Gone Girl (Which I have NOT read. No spoilers) I picked up Sharp Objects cause it was on a nifty library display.
Sharp Objects focuses on the gruesome murders of little girls in the small town of Wind Gap, Missouri. Returning to Wind Gap to cover the story is Camille Preaker a self proclaimed second rate journalist. Coming home means Camille has to come face to face with a high-strung mother and a controlling little sister she hardly knows. Yet, the hardest thing for Camille to do is keep the words on the page and not carved into her body.
Sharp Objects is one of those “lady-writer” dark literary thrillers being called Grip-Lit. Camille fills the role of (as it was summed up on an episode of the Book Riot podcast) an unreliable narrator with a drinking problem. Grip-lit sort of exists to categorize books that tell dark female stories in “non-traditional” ways. This book touches on and takes apart ideas of feminism and female relationships. It has a certain bleakness about it, the entire time I was reading I could feel the slick grime that covers Camille’s world and kind of wanted to just dig deeper.
I think the mystery or reveal of this book is pretty easy to figure out, but I don’t think it’s so much about the whodunnit, but more about all the elements that have to come together to make someone commit these murders.
As someone who studied journalism I’m always interested in media about journalist, but I’m going to start calling out books that break The Audie Cornish Rule; named after NPR’s All Things Considered host Audie Cornish, who was annoyed that all female journalists in movies sleep with their sources. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say Sharp Objects breaks the Audie Cornish Rule so hard.
I’ll say what’s already been said; it’s a dark, gritty and quiet novel. It was a quick read and while the mystery didn’t surprise me the last paragraph took a lean I didn’t expect.
P.S I think this book has some of the best marketing copy I’ve read.
1/2 of the blogging duo at Books and Sensibility, I have been blogging about and reviewing books since 2011. I read any and every genre, here on the blog I mostly review Fantasy, Adult Fiction, and Young Adult with a focus on audiobooks.