Off piste, off genre: Gone Girl - what I thought

Blurb: What are you thinking, Amy? The question I've asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?' Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears.

• This is very much, *not* my usual genre. It’s a crime thriller. I don’t have any books with black covers on my bookshelf, except this one. But I’d heard so much about the book, I thought I had to give it a go.
  
• It took a while to get going until p35 the day Amy went missing. This could have been me getting used to the very different writing style from what I’m used to.But once she went missing, it was off...
  
• I liked Nick's point of view - very male, very realistic
• As it’s a thriller, it had lots of twists and turns and kept me guessing throughout. It was a welcome difference to have the twists and turns so different from what I'm used to in my usual genre 
• It was told from his and her perspectives, mixing present and past tenses between chapters but somehow that didn't jar. Somehow once you knew *what or where* you were at the start of each chapter, it just flowed
  
• The book introduces and then uses some interesting concepts like cool girl - women who pretend to like everything the guy they’re into likes and playing into stereotypes which aren't real
• The concept of Diary Amy - what she presents to the world
• The idea of the nice enoughs -  people who are ‘Nice enough but with a  soul made of plastic - easy to mould, easy to wipe down'
  
• I enjoy books which introduce concepts like this, as I feel as if I'm learning a new vocab of terms and concepts. I often do this in my writing 
• The book gives you a glimpse into the mind of a psychopath - planning and out-smarting police, thinking ahead all the time. I don't tend to do this in my writing ;-)
  
• I had read many reviews which said the ending, *wasn’t* a real ending. This worried me as I approached it. I disagree, I think it was a proper ending, and it didn’t feel rushed, it felt about right. It was a clever ending, actually, something which left me thinking. I won’t spoil it by saying any more, you’ll have to read the book

Have you ever gone completely off piste from your usual genre, like I did here? How did it work out for you? Would you do it again? I'd love to hear from you.

And then he was gone...

Liam xx