“Dark Places” by Gillian Flynn

The murders of the protagonist's family took place years ago, when she was a child being raised by a mostly single mother who was barely scraping by on a farm.  As an adult, Libby is very short, and surviving partially on the notoriety of being present during those murders. The book is well written, but it is filled with so much unpleasantness that I had to start skimming it. Figuring out whether family members were murdered by the brother, Ben, the overall ugliness of the people involved, the hysteria over little girls saying (lying) they were sexually molested, hints of satanism etc etc, was definitely not my cup of tea. At least Libby grew a lot emotionally as the book progressed, obviously beginning to overcome the trauma of her childhood. I'm glad her brother was exonerated.

“The Island of Doctor Moreau” by H.G. Wells (audio book)

 I listened to this audio book to prepare myself for the book “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau”. It was an interesting enough book, and you can clearly see its influence on modern tales of the fantastic. Man vs beast. How human are we really?

“The Ink Black Heart” by Robert Galbraith

 This book in the Strike series was much too long and too intricate and filled with too many re herrings. And yet, I couldn’t put it down because the characters were all so well drawn. I also found the exploration of online fandom to be quite interesting.