I'm working Gillian Flynn in reverse - first Gone Girl, sensational bestelling movie-adapted third novel; then Dark Places, second coming of a newly-started author, apparently living up to the expectation of her debut, Sharp Objects - which I'm planning on reading ASAP, because few authors get me like Flynn can. 
 I think it's all about the characters and points of view, to be honest. Flynn has the best kind of writing style - one that doesn't pressure the reader, doesn't make the narrator a looming presence impossible to ignore. She also writes about horrible people in a sympathetic way, but without putting them on a pedestal. I love this. There's way to many authors (and readers, sic!) excusing and/or romantizing terrible behaviours just because of some sappy backstories. Which, nope. I'm sorry for your loss, but they don't excuse you being an abusive person, or a murder, or ehi! even an ordinary bastard. 
 Gillian Flynn doens't make heroes out of ordinary bastards. She leads you into their minds and makes you understand what made them the monsters they are, but she never forgets to showcase them for what they are - monsters. Gone Girl is a great example of what I mean: you can't escape the twisted magic of that book, the one that makes you symphatize with both Nick and Amy. But never once the book stops from showing you how toxic and sick and 100% NOT-TO-DO their love is. 
 It works the same in Dark Places. You've got the main girl, Libby Day, only survivor of domestic massacre. When she was seven, her older brother Ben murdered their mother and two sisters, then was condamed to life sentence thanks to Libby's shaky witnessing. Grown-up Libby is a mean, selfish, weak young woman with not will to either live or die, who gets roped back in the murderous mess that was her past by young, lost causes obsessed Lyle and his little club of Murders Solvers. 
 Libby is a bad person, and her family is made out of some hugely messed-up persons - and I loved each one of them. I loved twisted, scared Ben and his surrander to a mean world. I loved mama Patty and her desperate love for her children. I loved Libby, messy, mean Libby, a survivor with no sugar coating her emotional scars. It was hard to take in all their emotions, because Flynn is a merciless writer, when it comes to emotions. But that's her charm; and the raw, intense, yet never over-the-top way she describes her characters' journies leads the reader in some of the most compelling, twisted and terryfing plots I've ever read, with just the right amount of tension and details to never make it too much.