I think this is nearly a four, as there is a lot of good stuff in Gone Girl.It's original and self-propelled, hard to put down, with just the right amount of twists. Some of those twists are telegraphed a good bit, I think intentionally, and some are concealed until the last second. Most of the characters are pretty horrible, but they need to be for the story to work.It misses the mark in a small way with the prose and dialogue, which are a bit flat. I wouldn't think of it as a big deal, but with this being talked up in some more literary circles I hoped for more. I don't know why Gone Girl is treated more seriously than, say, Ludlum.It misses the mark in a bigger way in that characters seem to be cornered into their reactions in ways that I couldn't believe. I can imagine so many outs for each of these (protagonists?) people that I can't buy into their eventual destination. And the plot would unravel pretty quickly should a rational decision crop up once or twice.I kind of enjoyed the heck out of it and I've been recommending it to people since about the halfway point.
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