In the Woods | Tana French

In the Woods | Tana French | Strong First Showing From French

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In the Woods

	In the Woods Tana French Hodder And Stoughton Ltd., 2007 - 608 pages average customer review:based on 232 reviews view larger image
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Haunting

I read this book about a year and a half ago and I keeping having little flashbacks to it--like sometimes fragments of a dream pop into your mind--that make me wish I was still in the middle of reading this book. I'm surprised by the reviews that describe the book as too wordy or tedious, as I have little patience for that style, and I really couldn't put this book down. Since then, I've been surprised every time I notice the mere 3-1/2 star rating on Amazon. When I took the time to think about it, I wondered if it was because of the lack of resolution of one of the plot threads. Sure enough...
While it's not a perfect book, I'm finding it a bit pathetic how many people are giving low reviews based on the unresolved ending. I was frustrated too, but the book is more than its ending. I loved the atmosphere of mystery created by not just the latest crimes, but built on layers of local mythology and archaeology. I will definitely be reading the next book, The Likeness.

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Strong First Showing From French

In the Woods is ostensibly just a mystery revolving around the disappearances and gruesome murders of a handful of children in Ireland. In reality, it's the story of surviving and coming to terms with the past.

Despite it's heavy subject matter, French keeps the writing from veering into a dark and overwrought place with a smattering of lighthearted pop culture references and, most of all the dynamic relationship between the main characters.

Big let down, could have been a lot better

This book starts with three children going into a woods by their little community in Ireland. They go missing and when the search party goes after them they only find one child, gripping a tree for his life and his shoes full of blood. No sign of the other children is found.

Flash forward twenty years, and the surviving boy, Adam Robert Ryan, is using his middle name and working as a detective. In the same community that he grew up in, a twelve year old girl is found murdered. Robert and his partner Cassie are then supposed to discover the killer and there is a thought that this case and the one twenty years ago could be connected.

I was not thrilled with the writing style. There were times that it dragged, too much detail, and too much whining from Robert. The relationship with Cassie was great until he sleeps with her, then he has to get very weird about it.

I will say the mystery of who killed the twelve year old girl was good. But, the idea of what happened to Robert when he was a child, used to draw people to buy the book in the first place, gets left on the back burner and never solved. What was the point of having that in the story if nothing was even going to be done with it? That fact just made the book a huge let down.

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