Review: Gone Bitch by Steve Lookner!

Title: Gone Bitch: A Parody of Gone Girl
Author: Steve Lookner
Format: Paperback, 160 pages
Pub. Date: September 19th 2014
Source: Goodreads Firstreads


Book Description via Goodreads:

Meet Nick. He's kind of dumb. Meet his wife, Amy. She's kind of a bitch. One day Amy goes missing. What happened? Find out...in GONE BITCH!

GONE BITCH is the hilarious new parody of Gone Girl which will have you on the edge of your seat AND rolling on the floor. All your favorite characters from Gone Girl are here...but way funnier!

First off, there's NICK. Nick doesn't seem particularly upset that his wife is missing, or particularly anxious to find her. But he is perfectly willing to stop by the searches for Amy...because he can try to pick up girls there using lines like, "I'd like to search YOUR woods." Nick also loves lying to the police. For example, Nick's alibi for the morning Amy disappeared is that he was hang gliding, taking a karate lesson, and shooting a major motion picture with Keanu Reeves.

There's also AMY, Nick's wife. Amy is basically the worst person ever. Which is unsurprising, since she's a really hot girl. Therefore her one goal in life is to make her hot girlfriends jealous, no matter what it takes. Would Amy really stoop so low as to frame Nick for murder just to make her hot girlfriends jealous? If you don't know the answer, then you haven't hung out with enough really hot girls.

There's GO, Nick's sister. Go makes out with Nick a lot, but don't get the wrong idea: they are NOT having sex. (Although they do get to third base once in a while.)

There's RAND and MARYBETH, Amy's parents, whose “Idiotic Amy” book series chronicles the embarrassing moments of Idiotic Amy, a girl who looks suspiciously like Amy and does embarrassing things suspiciously like things Amy has done. The books have been a huge success, with millions of girls worldwide buying volumes like “Idiotic Amy Wets The Bed” and “Idiotic Amy and the Guy She Had Sex With and Never Called Her Again”.

There's DESI, who's been stuck in the friend zone with Amy since kindergarten. Desi still hopes that one day Amy will come around and want to take things to another level, but tragically, he fails to realize that no guy ever escapes from the friend zone.

And don't forget BONEY and GILPIN, the detectives investigating Amy's disappearance. They strongly suspect the "crime scene" in Nick's living room is fake, because it's pretty hard for a grand piano to flip upside down accidentally.

With every page of GONE BITCH the tension builds:

Will Nick go to jail?
Will Amy ever return?
Will Nick ever get over his diarrhea from eating a search volunteer's Frito pie?

You'll want to keep reading to find out what happens, but you might not be able to stop laughing long enough to do so!

You've seen the movie. You've read the book. Now read the parody that makes fun of both!

Review:

★★★

So first, I'd like to put out a disclaimer about my reading of this parody: I haven't read Gone Girl. The thriller/mystery genre isn't really my bag, so I didn't really have an interest in it. Then I got excited when I found out it was being made into a movie, because I could skip the book and just watch that (I know, I know. I'm a terrible reader.) Then I found out that the movie starred Ben Affleck, an actor whom I don't enjoy in the least. So I decided not to watch this either. Then I stumbled across the parody, chuckled at the title, and had to give it a go.

As someone who is unfamiliar with the original book Gone Girl, I thought this was a pretty funny story. The characters were really over-written and dramatic, and the narration was snarky. I snickered aloud more than once throughout the course of the book. While I know these characters are based on the ones from Gone Girl, I honestly have read quite a few books where Lookner's version of Amy was how I viewed the main female character: obsessed with her looks and image, really shallow, boring, and altogether unlikable. And on top of that, though Nick too is written with a sense of humor, and is not without his own problems, you kind of start to like him. Maybe I should give Ben's onscreen version a try after all.

This is a pretty quick read at 160 paperback pages, and it didn't take me very long to get through it all. If you have actually read Gone Girl I think you'll feel more strongly about this parody version; either you'll be angry that he satirized a book you loved, or you'll get a laugh or two at the expense of a book you didn't enjoy. As a neutral reader, that's how I feel- neutral. It was funny, but not something that I'll probably read again (that is, unless I read Gone Girl and come back to this). I think those who read it will enjoy it more or less than me, depending on how you liked it. I'd also recommend it to people who enjoy works like Nightlight by The Harvard Lampoon.

I received this book through the Goodreads Firstreads program in exchange for my honest review.