Gone Girl

Good writers are able to paint vivid descriptions in a few quick strokes. Bad writers pile on the adjectives and neologisms and end up with an unbelievable mess. It doesn't take many pages of Gone Girl to learn that Gillian Flynn falls into the second category. She overdescribes and overwrites nearly every scene. At more than 400 pages, this pulp entertainment works as a page turner, just, but would have greatly benefited from a 100-page pruning.