Windsor Locks Library BookBuggs discussion

This thriller was suggested by one of our BookBuggs at our August meeting, so I decided that maybe I was in the mood for a thriller. The interesting thing about this one is that, much like Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, there were no likable characters at all, no one you were rooting for to come out on top and overcome the odds at the end.

Stephanie is a widowed Mommy Blogger, Emily has a successful career in PR at a fashion company, and Sean, Emily's British husband, is a businessman whose actual job I have forgotten. Stephanie and Emily bond over their small son's friendship. One day Emily asks Stephanie to pick up her son, Nikky, at school and says she will be a few hours late. Hours stretch to days and weeks. It is obvious from the start that Stephanie is seriously whacko as she copes with Emily's disappearance.

I liked the way Bell developed her characters. Although Stephanie definitely operates off the beaten path, her true personality is revealed gradually. Is she misguided? Is she evil? Is she just nuts? She seems genuinely bewildered and worried about what happened to Emily, but this doesn't make her any more appealing. Sean and Emily will raise similar questions.

I guess my question here is, how do you feel about novels without a guiding light, where there is virtually no one that makes you feel warm and fuzzy and grateful that they are there? I really enjoyed A Simple Favor AND Gone Girl, but I don't think I could make a steady diet of stories where you end up praying that you never meet people like this (unless you already know them)!

I did not care for Gone Girl and probably from your assessment of the above book, would not care for that either. Maybe right now its the state of the world we are living in but I have to get the sense that one of the main characters is going to be a humane, decent person.