Bingo Square for Dream Vacation.
I’d love to go to Ireland, and funnily enough I bought this to read on my international trip where I met up with friends in Spain … after their first leg of the trip concluded in Dublin. (Boring reasons I couldn’t go this time, but hoping to get another chance).
Anyway, this is the fifth book I’ve read of French’s Dublin murder squad series, and given that theyre all about homicide, it’s pretty impressive that I still want to go, as the strong sense of place French imbues in all her books isn’t always inviting (Hi there, Broken Harbor!)
This is probably my least favorite because of a fairly minor detail. French’s books always flirt with implausibility (the memory loss in In The Woods, the doppelgänger in The Likeness impersonating a victim amongst her friends, the coincidences that tie the detectives to cases) but this is the first time it spills over into the out and out supernatural, and it diminishes an otherwise realistic book. It’s exceptionally disappointing because the girls at the center of a teenage boy’s murder don’t have to have telekinetic abilities for them to seem unsettlingly close and almost menacing in their bond, and it has nearly no effect on the plot, coming up infrequently.
That said, its otherwise a typical French book, with unlikely partners on both sides of the investigation, impeccably written as always, with distinct characters including Dublin itself.
I rated this one four stars for the same reason. It was Too Much.