If you're feeling sadistic and really want to freak out some newlyweds, give them a copy of this book, but be aware that there's a good chance you'll end up with someone sleeping on your couch while they rush to get a quickie divorce. 
 Nick and Amy Dunne started out as a couple that you usually only see in movies. Attractive, smart and hip with cool jobs at New York magazines, they've even got great back stories with Nick being a small town Missouri boy who made it in the big city and Amy was the basis for her parent's successful series of kid's book called Amazing Amy. Their storybook romance collapses when the economic downturn costs them both their jobs, and then they have to move back to Nick's hometown to care for his ailing parents. 
 On their fifth anniversary, Amy suddenly vanishes and there are signs of a struggle in their house. Nick's behavior seems odd and suspicious as Amy's disappearance turns into a media sensation. Told to us in parallel first person accounts, Amy's version from their first meeting and early years up until her disappearance and Nick's story from the morning she vanished onward eventually make it clear that something was very wrong in this marriage. 
 There's several things I loved about this book. The He-Said/ She-Said story telling structure develops both Amy and Nick incredibly well, and I found my sympathy constantly shifting from one to the other. Flynn also makes some great points about how the media is both feeding on these type of crime stories and influencing how people react to them. 
 Best of all is that it surprised me several times, and I've read enough thrillers and seen enough crime movies that I usually don't get caught off guard. I thought I had this one pegged about a third of the way through it, but Flynn had several more twists, turns and loop-the-loops that I did not see coming at all. 
 I had a few problems with it. (view spoiler)[There was a lot of little inconsistencies. Amy is so smart that she can outwit the police and not leave a single trace, yet keeps all her money with her instead of stashing some of it somewhere? She'd really relax and hang out with a couple of Ozark grifters and not come up with a way to prevent them robbing her? The woman who plans everything out for a year to the point of having a checklist for faking her own disappearance doesn't make out a budget to maximize her hide-out cash and doesn't know what a gallon of milk costs? 
 Plus, I was a bit let down that Flynn turned Nick into the 'hero' of the story by the end. I enjoyed the book most when I realized that a brilliant sociopath had married a lazy narcissist with misogyny issues. To me, a better ending would have been for Nick to once again take the easy way out and willingly stay with Amy to enjoy a life of celebrity as they sold her story. They deserved each other in a way so I would have found an ending like that more satisfying. (hide spoiler)] 
 Still, this was an intriguing book that went much deeper than your average thriller when looking at the dark side of marriage. Fans of this one should also check out Mr. Peanut