Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is set around a missing woman's case in Missouri, voiced by the nearly-perfect wife Amy Elliot Dunne who goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, and the unhappy, number one suspect husband Nick Dunne.

Like life, the novel is split into perspectives and timelines, and easily, not knowing who to believe will hook you from the beginning.

The first part covers, Boy Loses Girl; a division of narratives every day Nick's wife goes missing and the investigative process, and old diary entries by Amy.

The second part covers Boy Meets Girl; the clues Nick uncovers over Amy's disappearance and loose ends of her past that seemed to be tied up in a nice pretty blue bow.

The third act, Boy Finds Girl (or Vice Versa) only leads to a stunning conclusion, if you are the type of person who predicts endings far advanced.

Unfortunately, I am one of those readers. Captivating, brilliant, and yet a bit entirely too cliche, the reading experience of Gone Girl was one of fascination and also frustration.

The conceptualization is easily addictive. For the first half of the novel, sympathy builds towards Amy as Nick seems to be living out just another day in Missouri, appearing unemotional and stoic. She is pictured, from old diary entries, as a unappreciated and abused housewife with a husband who only used her for her looks and wealth. As the the timeline rotates towards the second half of the novel, we begin to see the clearer picture of who Amy and Nick really are. Over the period a several weeks to years two lives come brutishly undone; one spouse is revealed to be a flaming psychopath, the other not-so-much, and they really fit perfectly together.

Both characters have a lot of baggage in terms of ghosts of their childhoods, broken relationships with parents, and failed dreams of becoming writers. Skeletons come out of the closet for both Amy and Nick, as it happens in every mystery/suspense novel, and there are a lot of interesting background characters and motives to play around with; Amy's obsessive ex-boyfriends and high school best friends, grudges that are held with an iron-grip, and little inner jokes between the couple that are the glue that holds them together. At most Gone Girl is more than a murder-mystery novel and uses typical devices like clues and suspects to build up a case around Nick, but then gradually builds a deeper psychological downfall of marriage and unrequited dreams.

As center performers in this novel, perhaps the most frustrating aspect was the narrative; both characters are entirely unreliable, which hooks you at first. But, then when the allure rubs off, the story grows repetitive and self-centeredness seems to be the root of the novel. Nick was the most frustrating was the male protagonist; there isn't a lot of sympathy to be had for him because he makes stupid decisions following his wife's disappearance, he shows more consideration over double-checking his every move so he is not made to be a main suspect, rather than being concern his wife is just gone. There is a technical draw to this, which comes full circle at the end of the novel, but it's not enough to really care what happens to him; eventually other supporting characters become more interesting, and inevitably aren't given their full purpose to the story.

And, perhaps the opposite of what the novelist intended to do, I began loving crazy Amy. Amy is definitely something else; wild, brilliant, smart, delusional, intuitive, unapologetic, down and dirty, and most of all, a female character who is the antithesis of normal female characters. In both books and entertainment, it's rare to come across a female character who feels wholly like an adult; she speaks her age, acts her age, even curses her age. She doesn't try to be a man in an man's world, she is an adult in the real world (however, off-kilter her perspective/reasoning/life experience may be). Her focus doesn't laser onto only fashion, only guy-centric, only wealth - like we often see in books and movies. Amy isn't purely a psychological vampire, nor a broken housewife, nor a tarnished daughter, nor someone who is merely missing, but so deeply layered and complex it will make your head spin. My thirst to know all about her is what drove me more to finish the book than I think actually finding out what happens to her.

Gone Girl is suspenseful and gripping, but I felt like I had seen the stage set before. In fact, I feel like I've seen it all before; the novel itself reminds me of a thriller I would watch at home like Prisoners on an empty Friday night where I was waiting for my mind to be turned into a pretzel only to be utterly disappointed by the ending that was not a surprise, gripping, or satisfactory. And perhaps for this novel's sake reality mixed with fiction a little too much for its own good because we have seen this scenario before. Television marathons of spouses snapping on each other committing murder and/or causing disappearances. The Nancy Graces of the world making nationwide cases out of personal family tragedies. A seemingly-perfect happy marriage systematically being dissolved by the those involved because of their own neuroses.

Psychologically, the novel is a page-turner. In the last 150 pages or so, the suspense loses its luster; the cat and mouse chase is gone, characters are running in circles, and the ending feels cheating. The fixation with Gone Girl, however, is that with the author's map at our fingertips, its easy to become the narrative's little pet to trail the investigation crumbs. But, even if the ending is unhappy, it should make sense, and not feel like a last-minute conclusion haphazardly thrown together. Even if the the characters aren't wholly likable, and they aren't supposed to be, "they should get what they deserve", but somehow they don't. The story, as a whole though, isn't entirely up shit creek, just doesn't live up to its hype.