It's been about an hour since I finished Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I put it down and immediately took a long shower. Now, I only take long showers when I'm either cold or thinking, and this book definitely required a thinking type of shower. It was incredibly intense and disturbing, not to mention gripping. I was incapable of putting the book down once I'd started reading it. When I wasn't reading Gone Girl, I was thinking about Gone Girl, and I don't think I'll be able to get it out of my head for a long while.

Before diving head-first into this novel I had a basic idea of its plot. I knew what would happen to the characters on a general level but I didn't know how they would end up there, and this, I feel, made all the difference while I was reading it.

I'm sure many of you have already heard about this book since it has caused quite a splash after it's 2012 publication. For example, the novel was a New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list for 8 weeks, a movie adaptation under the same title was released in 2014, and it's become a pop-culture reference.

The basis for the novel is that on their 5th anniversary Nick Dunne returns home to find that his wife, Amy, is missing. From the beginning, the reader notices that something is very wrong with the investigation; while the police remain convinced that Nick is behind his wife's disappearance, the story told from his point of view shows that he is innocent. However, Nick is clearly an unreliable narrator as he constantly hides things from the reader, which accounts for a growing distrust towards Nick. And then of course there is Amy's diary...

After the main plot twist in the novel, you see that both of the main characters are deeply psychologically damaged individuals, and begin to understand how their relationship has collapsed so utterly from the fairytale it began as.

The novel twists in the genres of thriller, crime and mystery in a truly addictive way. Gone Girl raises so many questions about relationships, how well you truly know your partner, and feminism. I've already purchased the rest of the books by the brilliant Gillian Flynn and can't wait to read them.