Finished: Sharp Objects (Flynn) Very disturbing, page-turning book! By the same author who wrote Gone Girl, which I liked more...only because this one was so disturbing on many levels. The main character, Camille, is a 30 year old reporter who has to go back to the small Missouri town she grew up in to cover the brutal deaths of two young girls. What we find out about Camille is that she's been a basket case from the time she was 13 and her own 10 year old sister died. Camille has nearly every portion of her body except her face covered in word scars that she carved into herself over the years. She's only 6 months out of a psych facility for cutting, as a matter of fact. Her mother, Adora, is an unloving, sick woman. I figured out pretty quickly that Camille's sister had spent her life ill and finally died because the mother spent her young life poisoning her....Munchausen's by Proxy. Of course, Camille didn't know that...but comes to realize it in the end. Camille's also got a younger, 13-year old, step-sister, Amma, who has been brought up and "cared for" whenever she's ill by the same psychotic mother. Amma is a piece of work all her own because of her upbringing. She figured out long ago what her mother was doing to her but figured that kind of love is better than no love at all. Amma and Camille form a little bit of a bond, but Amma is totally jealous of anyone that gets the slightest bit of her mother's attention. When she figures out that Adora doesn't care for Camille, then she is more willing to bond with her. However, again, I figured out pretty early that is was "mean girl" Camille, and her three other pretty blonde mean girl friends who actually killed the two little 9-year old girls! It's just a horrific story. For instance, Amma pulled all the teeth of the little girls after she killed them to use them to create her mother's ivory bedroom floor in her doll house, which is an exact replica of their own stately home. (Adora has a genuine ivory floor in her bedroom put in long before hunting for ivory became illegal.) Even Adora's back story suggests she was also psychologically abused as a child. When she was 8, her own mother walked her out into the woods and then released her hand and told her not to follow her back. When she finally turned around and made her way home after her mother left, it was hours later, and her bare feet were bloodied. She walked in the door and her mother was just reading a newspaper, lowered it, and looked at her. Cold, creepy, evil, heartless women. Camille actually escapes the cycle of abuse as she finally comes to realize all these things. She wonders if she would be that way to a child of her own, but then realizes that no...she would be kind. Of course, that's after she's ruined her own body and psyche for all these years. Amma, didn't survive it. She's institutionalized in a juvenile facility until she's 18..."and probably for much longer than that".