A well written mystery where nothing is quite what it seems. 
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 I'll say right up front that I read this book knowing absolutely nothing about it other than a lot of people liked it. I didn't read any book jacket blurbs (I had the ebook) or reviews ahead of time. I didn't even know what genre it was when I started. I think that was a positive factor in my liking the book as the book is written as a mystery and the book itself was a mystery to me. 
 The structure of the book was the first thing I really enjoyed. Telling the same story from two different perspectives in two different time frames grabbed my interest, especially when I realized that neither narrator was being completely forthcoming with the reader. I also liked the way you could see the timelines converging in the first section: Nick's plodding through details of the immediate aftermath of the disappearance and Amy's quickly catching up from years before. I thought that the author kept up the mystery very well, leaving little clues as to what was really going on without giving it all away until she was absolutely ready to. 
 Both of the main characters were miserable beings. I disliked them both, for different reasons, but I still liked the book a lot. In fact, almost everyone in the book was loathsome in some way or another. The only character I thought had any redeeming qualities was Margo, and that may just be because everyone else set the bar so low. The fact that Flynn created such a horrible set of characters and I still devoured the book is a testament to her story telling. 
 I have mixed feelings about the ending, though. Part of me wanted some kind of justice for Amy for doing what she did, and part of me wanted Nick to pay for all that he did, but in the end I think I decided that they deserved each other, and that maybe that would be the best punishment for each of them. 
 The only real problem I had with the story is where Amy, after having spent a year patiently setting Nick up, starts up a "friendship" with the people at the Hide-A-Way Cabins. This seemed almost ridiculous after all of the preparations she had made, especially stumbling and telling two different people two different names for herself and going out of her way to start a conversation with Greta. Of course this was required for later plot devices, but I felt like it was out of character for Amy, especially just days after faking her disappearance. 
 Overall I thought it was an excellent book, and I definitely want to read more of Flynn's work. 
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