It's been a while since I've read a book that I couldn't put down. I've read very good books, some of which I've been eager to get back to, but this one just wouldn't let me go. I'd stay up way too late at night, unable to just close the book and put it down until I was literally seconds away from falling asleep. Given the chance to read it during the day, I had trouble prying myself away and it would take me some time to get out of this darkplace world.

I loved Gone Girl, but I was always waiting for the twist. My mind was constantly going, constantly trying to figure out what was going to happen, and I'd suspected well before it was apparent what the big twist was. But with Dark Places, I had no idea what to expect or what was going to happen, so I was just along for the ride. In that respect, i liked Dark Places a lot better. Perhaps it was that the reading experience was more satisfying.

When Libby Day was 7 years old, her mother and two sisters were murdered. She escaped (losing some a finger and some toes to frostbite while she hid in the snow) and later went on to testify that her 15 year old brother, Ben, had been the one to commit the murders -- even though she had never seen him do it. Ben went to jail, and Libby grew up an angry, troubled youth who became a profoundly depressed woman.

A group that is fascinated with the murders -- which had become famous -- finds Libby and invites her to attend some of their meetings. She quickly realizes that they are all convinced of Ben's innocence, and she soon finds herself, in an effort to make money off of them, opening up that chapter of her life, seeking out her loser father and finally going to visit her brother in jail. When she does, she starts to believe that Ben might be innocent too, but if he didn't kill her family, then who did?

As she makes the rounds and talks to different people who interacted with the Day family on the day of the murders in 1985, she starts to piece part of the puzzle together, and learns more about her family than she may have bargained for. With the help of her new friend Lyle from the club, she is able to get the answers about what really happened -- but not in a low-key fashion. Instead, she finds herself face-to-face with a killer, running for her life again.

I love the craftsmanship in Gillian Flynn's books. I was a big fan of how she crafted the ending of Gone Girl, and I also loved how this book flashed back and forth between present-day Libby and 1985 Ben and Patty. All of the flashbacks together give multiple points of view of a single day that undid a whole family, letting the reader put the pieces together to see the bigger picture that the characters individually are not privy to.

Now I can't wait to get my hands on Sharp Objects.