This book would best be approached with no real knowledge of the plot, but I’ll try to give you something more than just, “Go read it, it’s good, I swear!”
“You forget what it was like. You’d swear on your life you never will, but year by year it falls away. How your temperature ran off the mercury, your heart galloped flat-out and never needed to rest, everything was pitched on the edge of shattering glass. How wanting something was like dying of thirst. How your skin was too fine to keep out any of the million things flooding by; every color boiled bright enough to scald you, any second of any day could send you soaring or rip you to bloody shreds.”
The plot: a well-liked teenage boy is murdered on the grounds of the girls’ boarding school next door. A year later, one of the boarders brings a photo to Detective Stephen Moran that she found on “The Secret Place” — her school’s anonymous public board for posting one’s secret feelings, etc. The photo is of the dead boy, and written underneath is the caption, “I know who killed him”. Sensing this might be his opportunity to break onto the Murder Squad, Stephen takes the case and runs with it.
The plot is good — kept me hooked until the end. But what shone her was the writing. Is Tana French a teenage girl? Because she sure knows how to write them. Eight teenage girls star in this novel, and each one shines as her own person, so well that I felt I knew each one by the end. They belong to two separate packs, and French nails that feeling of sisterhood within a group of girlfriends. It’s incredible. She also nails the way that Moran feels watching them — trying to remember that feeling of being so close to someone, how strong your feelings felt at that age. It really rang true to me.
Some other reviewers on here have mentioned the more…unusual aspects of the case. Honestly, I could have done without that whole side-plot. The magic of the girls’ feelings for each other was more than enough to satisfy me.
Go read it, it’s good, I swear!
I haven’t read this one yet (I’ve only read 1 and 2), but Tana French is my jaaaaaam. One of those reads that you cannot put down. And you might forget to breathe. (I literally held my hand in front of my face as I scrolled down so I didn’t see anything in your review. This is how serious I am about this.)
I just read this one and loved it. My very first Tana French, but the first one is on its way to me via interlibrary loan. Hooray for newly discovered authors! (Even though I think I’m late to the party.)