How Not to Do Marriage

3.5 stars

Nick Dunne’s beautiful wife Amy disappears on the day of their fifth wedding anniversary. Through diary entries from Amy’s diaries, the readers see how the couple met and fell in love, when they were both magazine writers in New York. Two layoffs and a move back to Nick’s hometown in Missouri later, taking care of his ailing parents, and things are no longer so idyllic. The last two years of their marriage have clearly not been all that great and Nick quickly becomes the police’s prime suspect. While the early years of their marriage were great, it’s obvious that Nick hasn’t exactly been the model husband, and the suspicious members of the local community, the police and the media are all too ready to believe he had something to do with Amy’s disappearance. Maybe he even murdered her?

Her diaries show that she was growing fearful of him. Friends Nick didn’t even realise she had claims that she was afraid of him. She tried to buy a gun without his knowledge. And now she is gone without a trace. What exactly did happen to Amy Dunne?

I don’t want to say too much in my synopsis, because the whole point of this book is that it is so much better if you don’t know exactly what is coming. Considering pretty much everyone in the known world had read it before me, and many of those have reviewed it either this year or last year for Cannonball Read, there are both spoilery and non-spoilery reviews out there if you want them. All I knew about the book was that it was best not to know too much about it, there was a twist in there, and that it was wildly hyped all over the place. Since David Fincher decided to adapt the novel, which was opening in cinemas at the start of October, I wanted to have read the book before the film came out. I figured it was going to be a lot harder to remain unspoiled afterwards (I was right).

Full review.