The Grownup

· Hachette UK
3.5
82 reviews
eBook
64
Pages
Eligible
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About this eBook

A young woman is making a living faking it as a cut-price psychic (with some illegal soft-core sex work on the side). She makes a decent wage mostly by telling people what they want to hear. But then she meets Susan Burke.

Susan moved to the city one year ago with her husband and 15-year-old stepson Miles. They live in a Victorian house called Carterhook Manor. Susan has become convinced that some malevolent spirit is inhabiting their home. The young woman doesn't believe in exorcism or the supernatural. However when she enters the house for the first time, she begins to feel it too, as if the very house is watching her, waiting, biding its time . . .

The Grownup, which originally appeared as 'What Do You Do?' in George R. R. Martin's Rogues anthology, proves once again that Gillian Flynn is one of the world's most original and skilled voices in fiction.

Ratings and reviews

3.5
82 reviews
Tess Ferguson
9 January 2018
This is the first book I have read by Gillian Flynn and I was not impressed with the ending. It left me wondering where the rest of the book was. There was no closure and too many unanswered questions. The storyline was good and sucked you in, but the ending was very disappointing. You really have no idea if Susan or Miles is the nutjob in the story or if the husband really left or even if he loves his son, Miles. It has put me off wasting time reading her other stories, which is a shame.
2 people found this review helpful
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Emma Jones
22 December 2019
I actually really enjoyed this short story. It flew by quickly yet you were able to develop character perspectives quite quickly too. The twists were unexpected for me. Unlike Flynn's other works (obviously hard to compare a short story to a novel) but definitely left me wanting more as her work always does.
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Ritu Nair
19 January 2018
So this was creepy and confusing and I don’t really know what to think about that ending so I am giving it a non-committal 3 stars. The story of Grownup challenges to question what story you know, and what is real by how it is framed. Even at the end, we don’t know what happens and I guess for some that is something awesome but my curious ass wants a proper conclusion dammit. Anyway, the main story goes like this - a psychic/sex worker (it is complicated) is asked to come cleanse a house of malevolent spirits by a rich woman. She first thinks that the woman will be easy to trick, but while in the house, she starts to feel watched, and creeped out. The creepy teen step-son and the weirdness of the house doesn’t help. She doesn’t know who is bad - is it the step-son or the house, or is it as the kid says - the mother itself? Who knows? This book is more about the experience and the messing up of your beliefs in what could be possible. I personally did not see that twist coming but my buddy reader did, so maybe I was just caught up in the atmosphere of the novel. Whatever it was, the ending just left me conflicted, okay?
3 people found this review helpful
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About the author

GILLIAN FLYNN is the author of the #1 SUNDAY TIMES bestseller GONE GIRL, for which she wrote the Golden Globe-nominated screenplay, and the SUNDAY TIMES bestsellers DARK PLACES and SHARP OBJECTS. A former critic for ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, she lives in Chicago with her husband and children.

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