Books Made Into Movies Archives — Keeping Up With The Penguins

Dark Places – Gillian Flynn

November 4, 2025 / Sheree / 0 Comments

Having read and reviewed Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Sharp Objects, it’s high time I completed the trifecta, don’t you think? Dark Places was her second novel, first published back in 2009.

The story follows Libby Day, a woman who – as a child – was the sole survivor of a family massacre in a small town in Kansas. Flynn kind of buries the lede with the start of her story. It’s not the opening line of Dark Places, but this sentence jumped out at me from the first page and I reckon it should’ve been: “I was never a good little girl, and I got worse after the murders.”

For the most part, the story unfolds in the present day, twenty-four years after the massacre. Libby completely bucks the “perfect victim” stereotype (as you’d expect for a Gillian Flynn protagonist). She’s rude, she’s mean, she steals things just because she can, and she’s happy to sell off mementos of her family tragedy for cash if it means she doesn’t have to get a job. And yet, you can’t help but like her – she’s funny.

In the hopes that they’ll pay her for her insider knowledge, Libby falls in with a group of amateur sleuths. They have all kinds of theories about what really happened on the night of the massacre, and they’re not shy about telling Libby – to her face! – that her own memories of what happened when she was a child were manufactured by narrow-minded cops with preconceived ideas. They do indeed end up paying Libby to track down people who might have valuable information, like a girl who accused her brother of sexual assault and Libby’s alcoholic estranged father. As Libby undertakes these mercenary investigations, she realises that maybe the murderinos are onto something after all.

The ending of Dark Places – the “truth” of what happened to Libby’s family – is a bit convoluted, but it does fit together if you’ve paid close enough attention throughout the story. It’s a smidge less believable than Flynn’s other novels, but I attribute that mostly to the compressed timeline; the reader will have to stretch a little to truly accept that all of these events coincidentally occurred on the same day in 1985.

I want to offer my standard trigger warning for a truly awful dog death, and quite a bit of animal mistreatment that will make any sensitive reader recoil. The human murders are violent and bloody, of course, but they recede in comparison to what happens to our four legged friends.

I do like how Flynn wove in the tangible impact of the Satanic panic, and the confirmation bias of cops seeking that explanation for violent crimes back in the ’80s, and then, in the present day, the exploitation of tragedy by amateur sleuths (intentionally or otherwise). Mostly, though, I found it was a relief to read about a victim who didn’t Come Out The Other Side Stronger. Libby’s not here to make anyone feel inspired about overcoming hardship. So, if you’re sick of saccharine heroines, Dark Places is the perfect antidote.

Read Dark Places on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of Dark Places:

“I absolutely loved Gone Girl, but this book made me want to bathe in holy water after I read it.” – BTaylor14
“If you like devil worship you might like it.” – Amazon Customer
“Her characters are hateful and gross. Who makes a character named Diondra??” – Novel Experts
“If you like drugs, devil worship, white trash characters, slutty girls ,horrible graphic animal brutality, and reading about a mother and her girls being chopped with an ax, stabbed, and shot.. Then this book is for you!” – Amazon Customer
“Graphic, pornographic, idiotic drivel. Finished because I wanted to know “whodunnit”……no other reason” – B. King

Eileen – Ottessa Moshfegh

August 26, 2025 / Sheree / 0 Comments

I’ve been an Ottessa Moshfegh fan-girl since I read the very first pages of My Year Of Rest And Relaxation. So, it was inevitable that I would pick up its precursor: Eileen, Moshfegh’s first full-length novel, first published back in 2015.

Eileen is narrated from the present(ish) day, but the protagonist is reflecting on events that took place the week of Christmas in 1964. Despite that choice for timing, I’ll warn you right now that Eileen is a holiday novel in the same sense that Die Hard is a Christmas movie. That week was the last that the titular main character spent in her hometown, a small Massachusetts village she calls X-ville. She is narrating for us what she calls her ‘disappearance’ at age 24.

At that time, Eileen was a secretary at a boy’s prison that she calls Moorehead, living in squalor with her paranoid alcoholic ex-cop father. So, it’s not hard to imagine why she fantasised about running away and moving to New York City. That dream is little more than idle fantasy – alongside the more explicit fantasies she has about Randy the buff prison guard – until a new counselor, Rebecca Saint John, is hired to work with the Moorehead boys. Suddenly, Eileen is offered a taste of a different life, one where she could be friends with someone as enchanting and sophisticated as Rebecca – but it ain’t all beer and skittles.

Now, a timid author might have given the reader a bit of distance from a protagonist as repugnant as Eileen, but Moshfegh is anything but timid. No one writes confronting fiction about distasteful women quite like her. And it’s not subtle: Eileen actually says to the reader, on page 7, “I am not one of those women who try to make people happy all the time,”. The most generous reader might feel sympathy for Eileen, whose life is dreary (to say the least), but most of us will find her pretty unpalatable. She hates everyone and everything – including herself – and her only solutions to any problem seems to be stalking, shoplifting, or sniffing something gross.

Eileen is a grim read, but it’s also funny. Someone unfamiliar with Moshfegh’s oeuvre might assume that the humour is an unintentional side effect of having a story narrated by such a dry and cutting character, but I know my girl well enough to know that nothing she puts on the page is unintentional. Likewise, the character of Rebecca Saint John is very carefully crafted, and the allusion to Daphne du Maurier’s (slash Alfred Hitchcock’s) Rebecca is no accident.

Jean Zimmerman (NPR) called Eileen “charmingly disturbing”, “delightfully dour”, and “pleasingly perverse”, which sums it up about as well as I possibly could. Moshfegh hits all the right beats, and proves to us all that she was a master of the form from the very beginning. My only objection to Eileen, of course, was a very, very sad dog death in the ‘Sunday’ chapter – but I had some warning, so I knew it was coming and I could steel myself. I offer the same to you now, of course.

Read Eileen on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)

My favourite Amazon reviews of Eileen:

“Just some grungy girl with no self esteem or conscience.” – G. Jahn
“This book is disgusting. This writer should have kept this one for her diary. I kept hoping it would get better. I read 85% and deeply regret the waste of my life spent reading the bowels of someone’s warped mind. I read it because it was recommended by a writer I admire. I will NEVER do that again. If you enjoy shallow perversion, you might love it!” – Amazon Customer
“How is this so highly thought of? It is a girl bitching about her life for 300 pages. Hard pass” – SUSAN
“Part way thru the book, I paused and read some of the reviews. One mentioned that getting to page 221 make the whole thing worthwhile. So I trudged on. Spoiler alert! No it doesn’t.” – karen wulff
“Turgid, plodding, narrow, unrealistic in the exact sense of realism. It must have been a great hit in a writers workshop.” – jms333

One Day – David Nicholls

May 27, 2025 / Sheree / 1 Comment

The premise of One Day is laid out in the title. The story starts with an apparent one night stand on St Swithins D ay, in July 1988 in Edinburgh, and then revisits the characters on that day each year for twenty years. The reader sees their lives change and their relationship evolve through vignettes, without any other window into the events that shape them.

Now there’s a big Twist(TM) towards the end of One Day that reveals why the story is told that way. I’m going to do my best not to spoil it for you, as it wasn’t spoiled for me before I read it, but the author David Nicholls doesn’t seem that concerned. After all, he’s made it pretty clear in interviews, talking about drawing inspiration from a particular passage in Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of Thee D’Urbervilles (which he also uses as an epigraph for Part 5 of the novel):

She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year;… her own birthday; and every other day individualised by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it?

Nicholls does a surprisingly good job of maintaining the through-line in One Day. I’d expected it to feel jerky going from year to year so quickly without the filler, with lots of clumsy exposition to show what’s happened in between, but he manages it relatively smoothly and without fuss.

The central characters are definite ‘types’ – Earnest Emma and Dapper Daxter – without descending into cliche. They experience a natural trajectory of growth and evolution over the years, to which the reader bears witness; again, it was a surprise and a relief to see that Nicholls didn’t have to stagnate their personalities to keep the thread strong through his strange timeline. The push-pull of their relationship to each other has strong Normal People vibes (if Sally Rooney didn’t use this book as inspiration, I’ll eat my hat). They get further and further away from each other, and just as you think all hope is lost…

… well, again, I can’t answer that without spoiling One Day for you. The ending is a huge bummer, I will say that much. HUGE. A critic for The London Paper summed it up well: “[One Day] may be a love story, but it’s no fairytale: Nicholls doesn’t shy away from the harsh side of growing up, the disillusionment, regrets, and random cruelty of life,”. That said, it’s also strangely funny. There were multiple moments that made me chortle, usually where the central characters ribbed each other in dialogue. So, I can confidently say that One Day will take you through the full range of human emotion.

In the end, it’s the conceit that makes this an interesting novel. An otherwise standard tragic love story is given an intriguing twist in its telling, and that’s the strongest thing to recommend. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d get on it quick before it’s totally spoiled for you – the fact that you and I have escaped spoilers until now is a miracle in and of itself.

Read One Day on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of One Day:

“Should have dropped this book faster than Dex drops his seemingly thousands of lovers. Truly a sad waste of time. Both him, Emma and the book.” – North
“The only nice thing to say about it were the very british sounding quips and replies to light up the depressing atmosphere of two unlikable persons making incomprehensibly stupid decisions for the lengthening of the story’s sake.” – Gisela Qasim
“If these characters, all really caricatures, represent the British, no wonder they no longer have an empire!” – N&JM
“The only reason I kept reading it was because I was hoping that the two main characters would get drunk and pass out in bed and their lit cigarettes would burn the house down and they would both be dead… I wrote a note in the cover that said “read at your own risk – this book sucks” and left it in an airport. I’ll probably be arrested for terrorism.” – K. Mag

You – Caroline Kepnes

April 8, 2025 / Sheree / 0 Comments

We’ve all Googled someone we’re interested in, haven’t we? It’s one of the great benefits of living in the 21st century, the ability to learn more about someone with a few nimble keystrokes. Well, You by Caroline Kepnes – a thriller novel published back in 2014 that went on to become an international best-seller and a must-watch TV adaptation – takes this idea to its (il)logical extreme.

When Guinevere Beck stumbles into a quiet East Village bookshop, it could’ve been the perfect meet-cute. Joe, the bookseller behind the desk, is instantly enamoured with her, and they have some good banter as he puts her purchase through. He takes note of her name from her credit card, and immediately Googles her. That’s where You takes off.

The story is told from Joe’s perspective, addressed to the titular ‘you’ (Beck). He doesn’t ease the reader in. He’s immediately obsessed with her. Just a few pages after their would-be meet-cute in his bookshop, he’s outside her house watching her masturbate through her open window. He manufactures opportunities to be in the same place as her at the same time, learning almost everything he needs to know from her frequent Tweets.

When he manages to steal her phone, things escalate: suddenly, he’s privy to everything Beck doesn’t share online. He learns from her emails and texts that she has a pretentious party-drug-loving boyfriend and a chronically needy best friend – both of whom he’s going to have to get out of the way so he can have Beck all to himself, just as he dreams.

Kepnes really nails the psychology of stalking. From Joe’s perspective, all of his (insane) actions are completely justified – almost like favours he’s doing for Beck so they can be together as they ‘clearly’ should be. It’s easy to see how Beck falls for it, with all the work that he does to charm and manipulate her into believing he’s perfect boyfriend material. Creepy stalkers rarely appear creepy from the outset (if they did, no one would engage with them).

And, Kepnes’s masterstroke: Joe faces no legal consequences for his actions. There’s no hard-boiled detective on his tail, no plucky teen with aspirations of being a private investigator gathering evidence to bring him to justice. Like most real-life stalkers, Joe doesn’t just get off scot-free: he’s never even a blip on the cops’ radar.

I want to mention, too, that You is very firmly anchored in place and time (early 2010s, New York). Firstly, the pop culture references demarcate a specific period; Lena Dunham is one example that comes up often. Secondly, there’s the use of technology – Beck’s preference for email over texting was anachronistic in that window, but would be completely unbelievable even just a few years earlier or later, and Joe’s lack of concern about being tracked by cell phone location data clearly places this story before the release of the Serial podcast. And, honestly, You could only have possibly taken place in New York. The way that these characters (not just Joe!) behave, in public, is insane. I cannot fathom that they would get away with it anywhere else (and if it were taking place today, they would definitely be the inadvertent stars of the next people-behaving-badly viral TikTok).

I have a lot of thoughts about why You became so popular. I think it might have something to do with the fact that – aside from anything else – it’s a story about a man who cares very deeply about a woman. Yes, in a very sick and twisted way, but still. Crucially, that care drives him to action. He doesn’t just care, he shows that he cares with his (admittedly murderous) behaviour.

Joe never once exploits Beck’s domestic labour. She never has to pick up his dirty socks for the millionth time, or tell him where to find the milk in the fridge, or make a doctor’s appointment on his behalf. Beck gets to be an immature, irresponsible brat, 100% of the time, and Joe will be watching over her (again, I can’t say this enough, in a very sick and twisted way), protecting her, and solving her problems (by killing her).

In that way, You becomes an indulgent escapist fantasy of sorts, in a way that most other stalker/thriller books aren’t: because the story is told entirely from Joe’s perspective, the reader never has to experience any of the fear or distress that Beck must feel when she realises that her boyfriend is actually her tormentor. The reader gets to ‘relax’ into Joe’s perspective and appreciate his devotion, without being confronted with any of the downsides.

The runaway popularity of You led Kepnes to write three sequels: Hidden Bodies in 2016, You Love Me in 2021, and For You And Only You in 2023. I’m kind of curious about where Joe’s story goes, I guess, but I’m not sure yet how curious I am – I’ll need a bit more time to let the ending of this one marinate.

Read You on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of You:

“Basically we’re watching a bitter loser ogle a narcissistic attention-loving exhibitionist. It’s like paying to watch a pervert salivate over a Kardashian.” – JRBZ
“The “stalked” girl is a self-involved twit who surrounds herself with other self-involved twits, one so overbearing and possessive of “stalked” girl you know for sure Joe will have to off her – you just don’t think it’s going to take him more than 300 pages to do so.” – CC
“Language is offensive, complete lack of respect for human life. I have better things to do!!!!” – Kindle Customer Carol E
“if you like vulgar words in your book then you will like this” – Granna

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies – Seth Grahame-Smith

February 11, 2025 / Sheree / 0 Comments

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I love a book that does exactly what it says on the tin. That’s what we get with Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, a 2009 parody novel that combines Jane Austen’s classic 1813 romance with (you guessed it!) zombies.

The idea came from Quirk Books editor Jason Rekaluk, who looked at two unlikely lists (‘fanboy’ characters like pirates and ninjas and public domain books such as Crime And Punishment and Wuthering Heights) side-by-side. He ran the idea by Seth Grahame-Smith, who found himself captivated by the idea of Elizabeth Bennet as a highly trained zombie-slayer, and her love story with Mr Darcy playing out against a backdrop of ultraviolent zombie mayhem. According to him, the original text was “well suited” to adaptation into a zombie horror story.

The opening line of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies really sets the tone: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” The reader is catapulted into a version of 19th century England where a zombie plague has spread across the country, and Mrs Bennet is trying to find good husbands for her five daughters. The Bennet sisters attend balls, where they dance and occasionally kill off hoards of zombies trying to eat the brains of guests. When Jane is taken ill at Netherfield, there’s some concern that she may have fallen victim to the scourge – luckily, it’s just a cold after all, and she makes a full recovery. You get the idea.

There are a few clunky moments in Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, naturally, but overall the zombies are woven in far more smoothly than you might expect. I particularly enjoyed the expansion of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as a notorious highly-skilled zombie assassin, and found it totally believable.

Poor Charlotte Lucas fares even worse in this version than she does in Jane Austen’s original text. Not only does she still have to marry the loathsome Mr Collins, but she’s bitten by a zombie and gradually succumbs to the plague (before having her head chopped off and her body burned, as is apparently the custom).

Wickham also comes a cropper: in addition to having to marry Lydia after unceremoniously taking her virginity, Mr Darcy beats him senseless and he is left quadriplegic. Pretty much every reference to him from that point on ends with him soiling himself (and I must say, I think Grahame-Smith went a little too hard on that point – continence issues aren’t a deep well for punchlines).

Ultimately, Pride And Prejudice And Zombies is a good, silly parody to read for fun. I think anyone who tries to read it Academically(TM) and give clever hot takes about its commentary on gender roles in Austen’s oeuvre, or the symbolism of zombies in the marriage plot, is just trying too hard. Relax and enjoy it for what it is: a Regency romance occasionally interrupted by a zombie desperately seeking brains.

My favourite Amazon reviews of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies:

“Poorly done. The movie was awful and it was better than this book.” – EB
“He could have raped Austens novell with reptiloids, werewolves or aliens or whatosever out of the shock box instead -the result would have been equally silly, dump and senseless.” – Typhon
“The zombies play no easily discernible role in the plot, and seem to have been added for the sole purpose of marketing. Far better, then, to simply read _Pride and Prejudice_, and imagine zombies in it as you see fit.” – Ethan Wells
“I expected this to be funny book. It is boring. I had more fun starring at the wall.” –
Dagny Kurdwanowska
“Were it possible to rate it with negative stars I would gladly subtract all of them until the skies went dark… It is a poor parody of Pride and Prejudice and sadly blinds Austen’s satirical eye and can therefore be considered the literary equivalent of glaucoma. How anyone thought it would be a good idea to write this novel defies logic. To do so by inserting uninspired prose into a brilliant author’s work merely eviscerates a classic not satirizes it. Then by some unlikely twist of fate the author managed to find an unconscionable publisher who lacked enough sense and sensibility to publish it. Jane Austen he isn’t – with any luck she will return from the dead and eat his brain.” – Anon