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meadowbat's review against another edition
5.0
This is the third Dublin Murder Squad book I've read, and while I've enjoyed them all, this is my favorite yet, a meditation on the tension between freedom and security with a satisfying mystery at its center and lots of delicious crumbling countryside cottages at the periphery.
root_reads989's review against another edition
3.0
If you are a fan of Dark Academia, Donna Tart's The Secret History then this is right up your alley. So much so that Tana French credits TSH as an inspiration for some of the settings of the plot.
dee97's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.75
hausibeitom's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
jade_b's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
answerisclear's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
tscott907's review against another edition
5.0
Twisty and complicated, remarkably compelling. Cassie was my favorite in In the Woods and I loved having an entire book from her perspective. Tana French is so good at creating mysteries whose endings you can't guess but whose conclusions still make logical sense, which is more than I can say for most popular thriller writers. Once again deeply annoyed that I have to wait for the next book to come in from the library.
elbiesamuels's review against another edition
2.0
This book barely had any momentum, and whenever it got any, it kept losing it. After an intriguing crime scene, the detectives proceeded to go over all of the facts of the crime scene twice, fully explaining everything to two different groups of people in two fully written out scenes. But page 100, I got so tired of hearing everything about the crime scene, and I just wanted Cassie to get to the point to which the book had been building: the undercover work. From there, the pace flitted from interesting and tense to long stretches where nothing happened, mostly because one of the four other characters would go on some academic rant. More unbelievable than the actual premise--that someone resembling the murder victim could presume to take her place and fool people who had lived in close quarters with the victim, in spite of the host of dependency issues the entire group had for each other--was how far out of her way a professional, trained detective with undercover experience went to protect the people she was investigating from the actual investigation. The way it's billed is that she grows close to them and she never had much of a family, in addition to having been through the emotional ringer in the previous book, but I absolutely do not buy that 1). she would have subjected herself to something like this, being a detective with experience and training, or 2). someone wouldn't have pulled her out long before it reached the length it did. Frank is conveniently thrown in there as someone whose motives for planning the investigation can never really be known, and his unorthodox methods get results, so as long as he wants her there she'll stay, but it's just a way to facilitate a problematic and unbelievable plot. I was very disappointed with this book after having read In The Woods. I know critics and millions of people disagree with me, but this book was doomed from the word go.