I knew from the first three pages that I wasn't going to like this. Something about the writing style just rubbed me the wrong way, and I just didn't like the way it opened. I stuck with it, though, hoping that this book would live up to the praise I've heard. And on page 15, I knew it wouldn't.

 "When I was still in grammar school, maybe twelve, I wandered into a neighbor boy's hunting shed ... The walls were covered with photographs of naked women. Some of the girls were spreading themselves wide, others were being held down and penetrated. One woman was tied up, her eyes glazed, breasts stretched and veined like grapes, as a man took her from behind ...

  At home that night, I slipped a finger under my panties and masturbated for the first time ... "

What relevance does that have to anything? I'm not a prude, but I don't care to read about prepubescent children masturbating, especially when it has absolutely no relevance to what the book is about. And none of the information we are ever given about the characters is relevant to finding out what happened in the death of two ten year olds. It's just excessive information cluttering the book in a poor attempt at adding depth and drama.

This book is riddled with sexual comments about children for absolutely no reason, and I'm not quoting them all directly because reading them the first time made me feel disgusting, so I'm sure as hell not going to read them a second time just to bitch in a review. But every single time you meet a female character, whether or not you had already met them, comments were made about their breasts, how pretty they were, how sexually active they were, and then the main character would tie it into how sexually active she was when she was thirteen. All of it pointless, and all of it "you-should-be-on-a-list" level gross. The author being a woman just made it so much worse.

There was also a gross amount of sexism, but this was published in 2006 so I guess I can't expect too much from it. Not that it didn't piss me off anyway, especially the comments specifically about feminism and how women were made to be mothers and that science agrees with that. What even was the point of adding that in there? On page 134:

   "... it seems like part of your heart can never work if you don't have kids ... I didn't really become a woman until I felt Mackenzie inside me. I mean, there's all this talk these days of God versus science, but it seems like, with babies, both sides agree. The Bible says be fruitful and multiply, and science , well, when it all boils down, that's what women were made for, right? To bear children."

Get fucked. That was so annoying to read, and by this time in the book I was already so over it that the only way I was able to finish it was by listening to the audiobook.

Aside from all of that, the characters were flat and one-dimensional. The plot was predictable, mostly because the characters were so flat that it was almost impossible not to know what was going to happen on the next page. They were just there to further along the plot and it was painfully obvious the author didn't actually care about any of the characters beyond the main ones. And even the way they were written was very shallow. Especially with that "every character is so quirky and different" thing the author was doing.

This was my first Gillian Flynn book, and it will be my last.