"The Grownup," by Gillian Flynn

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn was one of my favorite mystery books I’ve read throughout high school. The book follows a fortuneteller as she explores the life of her new client and it drastically changes her own. It shows how people can be able to manipulate you while you are busy trying to manipulate them. Gillian Flynn, the author, definitely specializes in writing mystery books, when I visited her site she also had written another mystery book I loved, Gone Girl. She was born in Missouri and her mom and dad both worked in artistic fields, her mom was in reading, and her dad was in film. Gillian Flynn then earned her masters degree in journalism and moved onto being a TV critic(From Key West Literary Seminar). She worked for  Entertainment Weekly before she migrated onto writing mystery novels like The Grownup(From Gillian Flynn).

Although this book was small, It was packed with big turning points and surprises. Who knew that the main character’s seeming normal client Susan would bring with her so many problems. In the end, we are left with a question that stays in your brain hours after you finish reading, who is lying? At the beginning, we are introduced to our unnamed narrator, who is called by some as “Nerdy”. We are also introduced to her newest client, Susan, who claims to have a crazy stepson who is terrorising her and her son. Towards the middle of the book, Susan’s problem becomes very clear when she takes our narrator to her house, and the narrator sees the very odd and creepy stepson. Finally, our narrator is faced with a big choice, and a question of who is lying to her, Susan or the stepson. Our narrator is characterized in the start of the book as a very good manipulator. In the middle of the book, she is still characterized as a very good manipulator who is gaining all of this new money from this rich woman in distress. The end of the book though, changes that perspective because now we see that all along this family was manipulating her without her knowledge. 

I enjoyed this book thoroughly, and I loved all of the different characters in it and what they brought to the storyline of the book. The son was one of my favorite characters because he left me questioning with every one of his actions. The main character was a very likeable character and I liked her and I’m sure many people who read this book agree with me. I also liked how Gillian Flynn didn’t make every character 100% a good person, every one of the characters in this book was a manipulator in some way. I would recommend this book to people who don’t mind a big cliff hanger and enjoy mystery books like me. If you also like books with troubled characters or odd characters you would enjoy the stepson in this book. This book is a small book so even if you’re not sure whether to read it or not I would go for it. I’m sure people have different opinions on the final question the book leaves off with, which is, who is lying the mom or the stepson. In my opinion, I believe it 's the stepson because when you read the book you will see how he changes his story many different times to the narrator. On the other hand, you could believe it’s the mom who was lying because she definitely has a motive. If I were you, I would read the book and see for yourself who you think the liar is.