Best Of 2012 (Books)

With 2012 coming to a close, I decided to share with y'all my favorite reads from the past year. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be; I mean, I read a lot of really great books over the past 12 months! How in the holy hell could I pick my top 10?! Not even just pick my top 10, but rank them?! Impossible! Well ladies and gentlemen, I conquered the impossible. After some serious debating, I finally have my lists. Check out which books rocked my world in 2012!

**I've included a snippet of my review for each book, and clicking on the number above the cover will take you to the Amazon link**

MY TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2012

10.

"Gone Girl gives a perfect and chilling portrayal of a modern day psychopath that will stay with you for days, even after you finish the book. It’s fucked up in more ways than one, and it’s very clear that both Nick and Amy have issues that they refuse to admit to each other. Their love story consists of an angst-driven romance, fueled by lies and deceit, and lit on fire with a big match full of crazy."

9.

"Seriously, I’m sitting here writing this review and pouting like a 5-year-old who’s upset because she isn’t allowed to have a cookie before dinner. The difference between me and a 5-year-old is that I don’t care about the damn cookie; I’m upset that I’m done with this book! I want MORE! I never wanted this book to end."

8.

"Sweet mother of God, Tara Sivec has managed to do it again. What is ‘it’, you ask? Well, let me tell you. She has managed to make me fall in love with someone who is simultaneously causing me to pee my pants from laughter. Now, I’m not a love doctor or anything but as far as I’m concerned, that folks, is true love."

7.

"I was so emotionally invested in these characters that it was almost scary. I think of one negative thing to say. This book was just as beautifully written as Slammed, and I was completely mesmerized by every single story line."

6. 

"Holy. Fuck. I honestly don’t even know where to start or HOW to start reviewing this book. I finished it yesterday morning, and I can’t stop thinking about it! My emotions got thrown all over the place; I felt like a 25-year-old going through early menopause! I was pissed off, I was heartbroken, I was hopeful, I was devastated; I loved the main characters and I hated the main characters."

5. 

"The emotions that these characters evoked were intense, to say the least. I think I wanted to punch every single person in the face at least once. Jack and Lexi’s relationship frustrated me, upset me, excited me, and gutted me. The sexual tension between them dripped off the pages and if girls could get blue balls, I would have had a pretty severe case of them!"

4. 

"Disturbing. Romantic. Fucked up. Sweet. Heartbreaking. Sexy. How in the hell can all those adjectives describe the same book? I don’t know, I honestly don’t…but somehow they do."

3.

"This is by far the funniest book I have EVER read. Yeah, you read that right…funniest book EVER! You know those rare books that you read and by the time you’re about 10-15 pages in, you’re already in love with it? Well, you’re in luck because Seduction and Snacks is one of those books."

2. 

"The writing is brilliant, the characters are phenomenal, the relationships will give you hope, break your heart, make you smile, and make you cry. Slammed is just perfection. Absolute perfection."

1.

"I can count on one hand the number of times I couldn't find words to describe something, and this is one of them. The Sea of Tranquility left me speechless and essentially inarticulate.  I sat in front of my laptop just watching the cursor blink on the blank screen for almost twenty minutes trying to find the right words to describe the wonderful perfection that is this book. No matter what I say, it’s not going to be enough; I know that already."

Honorable Mentions:

Troubles and Treats by Tara Sivec

Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

Avoiding Responsibility by K.A. Linde

Seduced in the Dark by C.J. Roberts

There you have it! 2012, you rocked. Let's hope 2013 brings it's A-Game and gives me just as many amazing books to get lost in.

Pssst! One more thing.....

**I hope each and every one of you has a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year!**

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

WICKED on her hipbone, GIRL across her heart

Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.

NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg

Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.

HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle

As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims – a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.

There were several other books I had planned on reading before this one, but after I finished Gone Girl I was on such a Gillian Flynn high that I had to read another one of her books immediately. I was super excited to read this book, because 1) It’s written by Gillian Flynn, and 2) anyone who knows me knows that I love fucked up characters; however, this book tested my boundaries for how much f*cked-up-ness (yeah, I made that up) I can handle in just 230 pages. Sharp Objects just might be a little more than I can handle.

After two young girls are brutally murdered, Chicago reporter Camille is send back home to Wind Gap, Missouri to cover the story. The only problem is that Camille doesn’t want to go back home; she doesn’t want to stay with her overbearing and yet incredibly hateful mother, her stepfather who has barely spoken a handful of sentences to her, and her thirteen-year-old half-sister who she  quickly finds out has an incredibly dark, sinister side to her. Unfortunately, Camille understands having a dark side; she has been carving words into her skin since she was a teenager and has developed an alcohol addiction. While being forced to deal with her painful childhood memories, she is interviewing anyone she can to get some answers about these serial killings; unfortunately she may have to dig deeper into her past in Wind Gap if she wants to find some real answers.

I hate to say this, but I contemplated not finishing this book. It wasn’t even because of the content (although we’ll get to that later); it was because the first half of the book read like molasses. I felt like I was just trudging through it and the story wasn’t progressing one bit. It was a little brutal.

It’s pretty obvious just from the synopsis that Camille has serious issues; she does. I like broken characters, the ones that aren’t perfect. Camille, however, was a little too broken even for me. I still found myself empathizing with her, but not wholeheartedly. The details of how she carved words into her body made my skin crawl, the true story behind her losing her virginity made me cringe, and I had to remind myself multiple times throughout the book that Camille is in her 30’s. It didn’t seem that way at all. The way she was written made it seem like she was maybe 25-26…but no way was she in her 30’s; which just makes some of things she does even more disturbing: having sex with an barely legal 18-year-old boy, doing drugs with her thirteen-year-old half-sister…I mean, really?! Come on girl, get it together.

Her mother is a whole other bag of fucked up that I really can’t even go into, because I despised her so much. Her relationship with Camille was by far the most disturbing mother/daughter relationship I have ever read about and the times where they were interacting seemed to be the times where I really empathized with Camille. Amma, her half-sister, has something off about her too. She’s the perfect, pretty, most popular girl in Wind Gap, but she also has a really mean side to her. I mean, she takes the whole “Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls” act to a whole other level; a disgusting level.

Ultimately, the book turned out alright and I did like it, I just didn’t love it. The second half picked up so it read pretty fast and I got thrown a few times on who I thought was the serial killer. I think the fact that it seemed like every character in this book was fucked up in one way or another was just a little much for me; I’m good with one or two characters having serious issues, but any more than that it feels almost depressing. The saving grace of this book was the sheer suspense of “who-done-it,” which is why I ended up giving it 3 stars. If you want a dark, shocking novel that is incredibly disturbing at times, check out Sharp Objects; but if your skin is crawling half way through, don’t say I didn’t warn you…

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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media – as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents – the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter – but is he really a killer?

As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

“There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.” – Nick

HO-LY SHIT. I finished this book Friday night and it haunted me all weekend; seriously, it did and it wasn’t like I was just sitting around doing nothing other than letting my mind wander. I tailgated and went to the KU football game on Saturday, I went to my friend’s end-of-summer BBQ on Sunday, and yet this book kept invading my mind like a sneaky, little ninja! I mean, I’m in the middle of a round of flip cup and all of a sudden my mind is like, “Hey, remember when ____ found out about ____?! Do you remember that??? DO YA???” Needless to say, I wasn’t on my A-game, flip cup wise. I guess the easiest way to put this would be to say that this book fucked me up royally.

It is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary, and what should be a day to celebrate ends up being a day from Hell; Amy has vanished and slowly all fingers start to point at Nick as the prime suspect. He’s distant, unattached, almost as if he really doesn’t care that his wife is missing. He’s smiling during press conferences, taking pictures with attractive girls in the search party, and lying his face off. As more and more evidence is brought to light, mainly by his wife’s annual anniversary treasure hunt, this case becomes a national media circus and everyone is pointing the finger at Nick; including his twin sister, who has started to have doubts about her brother’s innocence.

I really can’t a whole lot about the events in this book, because I’m too nervous that I will accidentally give something away and that would just absolutely ruin it. This is a story that documents the mind and moves of a true psychopath. It raises the question of how well do you really know the person you married? What if they have a past you don’t know about? What if it’s all an act for something bigger they have in mind? It’s chilling to think about. You want to believe you know someone, but how much do people actually reveal to us? How much do we really know about anyone?

As far as the writing goes, it’s pretty flawless; Gillian Flynn does an excellent job of switching POVs between Nick and Amy. I really enjoyed the Midwest references in the book; I’m not from Missouri but I am from Kansas so most of the references were easily relatable: drinking soda from red Solo cups, we have “decks” not “outdoor spaces,” we come up with recipes like Frito Pie. You know, I think Nelly & the St. Lunatics said it best… “It’s a Midwest thang y’all, you ain’t got a clue.” There aren’t a lot of authors that use the flyover states as the setting for their novels, so I always get a little flit of joy when someone does; it’s the little things. She also brings to light how big of a role the media now plays in high profile cases. It really is true that finding an unbiased jury in 2012 is extremely hard to do when you’re dealing with a case of this caliber. I mean, think of the cases where wives went missing: Scott Peterson, Drew Peterson, Gabe Watson. The media had a hay day with all of these cases and all of the news stories were televised nationally; it’s incredibly hard to find a person who hasn’t already formulated an opinion about the case. The media can turn you from the grieving husband to the wife killer in a matter of one broadcast. I thought the incorporation of the Ellen Abbott character was clever, and clearly mirrored the image of Nancy Grace with her overbearing, loud-talking, I’m-right-you’re-wrong-he’s-guilty attitude. Spot on…spot on.

Gone Girl gives a perfect and chilling portrayal of a modern day psychopath that will stay with you for days, even after you finish the book. It’s fucked up in more ways than one, and it’s very clear that both Nick and Amy have issues that they refuse to admit to each other. Their love story consists of an angst-driven romance, fueled by lies and deceit, and lit on fire with a big match full of crazy. Hold on to your britches y’all; this book will take you on one hell of a ride. 

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