To get it out of the way: this book is not for people who think that books should only feature likeable people. (This review is not for people who think that books should only feature likeable people; this reviewer is not for people who think that books should only feature likeable people.) But if you're like me and you like unlikeable people in your books, you'll like this book.

I was thrilled by the first part of this book: unreliable narration is one of my favorite literary techniques; unreliable narration being used to make the narrators look good is even more fun and a pair of unreliable narrators each distorting the narration in their favor was compelling reading that went beyond the normal tenets of mystery novels to speak to the distance between who we are and who we want to be. In this first part, both Nick and Amy, taking turns narrating are both completely unlikeable and completely relatable. One of the parts that sticks out from here: Amy complaining that she's mad at Nick but she doesn't want to be mad so she ends up even madder because she's mad that now he made her mad. Chilling: clearly terribly emotionally manipulative, but at the same time I think most people can relate to that feeling where you had planned on handling a difficult situation calmly and maturely and it doesn't end up that way and the spiral that ensues. I like that by the end of part one, it was really clear to me that my two major suspects in Amy's disappearance were the narrators and one of them knew something that they weren't telling. It was clever and novel.

The second and third parts of the book are just less interesting. The narration stops being unreliable (except for maybe Amy's relationship with Desi -- I was definitely skeptical of her depiction) and I found the solution to the mystery less interesting: sociopaths are the stuff of fiction but for a novel that is trying to be gritty and show compellingly, realistically flawed characters, true absolutely-no-empathy-do-whatever's-in-my-best-interest sociopathy really has no place (I decided not to spoiler tag this: I don't think it actually gives anything away.) I wanted the culprit in Amy's disappearance to be, like the first part of the book, a flawed but ultimately relatable person.

Overall, I'm glad I read it; it probably deserves the hype for trying some very cool and original ideas in terms of narration, and I'll be interested in reading Flynn's other work.