Gillian Flynn does it again! 
 The Grownup was written in a completely different vein from what I had expected, given the genre of her other books. One thing that did remain the same, though, was that she manages to shock and misdirect her readers page after page! 
 This follows the story of an unnamed sex-worker-turned-phony-physic and her bid to help a family plagued by a haunted house and a crazed step-son. 
 The story begun in a hilarious fashion and I warmed to the uncouth yet honest and likable protagonist. She approached poignant and touching subject matters with a realness and a rawness that tempered the melancholy of her situation, when it would have been so easy to have been beaten by her wretched past. 
 The story seemed to progress in a predictable fashion and I felt the plot a little recycled from numerous spooky films. But this is Flynn's utter magic: she lures her reader into a false sense of knowing where they are going before taking them completely unawares! Bombshell after bombshell was dropped and the entire last quarter of the book saw the plot redirected on every other page! 
 What I adored about this the most were the hidden moments of artful brilliance littered in the text; one being how our unnamed protagonist's business card was found inside an old copy of Rebecca, an infamous novel featuring an unnamed protagonist. Just outstanding! 
 The ending had my low-key psycho side smirking in delight and I only wished that this story was elongated to full novel length as there was more than enough content that could have added to fill it!