Quickie review: ‘The Grownup’, by Gillian Flynn

(Thank you to Blogging For Books for the review copy!)

It’s hard to not sit down and read Flynn’s short story The Grownup all in one sitting, for two reasons:

1. It’s awesome.

2. It’s short.

Thus, this story is a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s a great mystery/suspense story and I devoured it. On the other hand—ten freaking dollars for a sixty-page story?! No thank you!

The story centers around an unnamed protagonist, who earns her living posing as a psychic. She’s a little bit jaded from spending her whole life conning, in some way or another, but when she encounters a woman who believes her house may be haunted, her careful game of deceit and control begins to unravel. She’s forced to ask herself, the ultimate skeptic: are ghosts real? Or has the con artist now been sucked into the ultimate con?

I think if you can get ahold of this from your local library, you should, because it’s not only one of the tightest short stories I’ve read recently, it’s a great lesson in how to maintain tension and create clever plot twists in a story, for those of us who are writers and are learning as we read. However, I wouldn’t buy it. There’s just no way I can justify the cover price!

The Grownup, by Gillian Flynn (hardcover, 64 pages). Published November 2015 by Crown. Genre: mystery, suspense, horror. Four out of five stars.