In the Woods by Tana French

In the Woods by Tana French
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 2007
ISBN 13: 9780143113492
429 Pages

                                   Synopsis 

In Tana French's powerful debut thriller, three children leave their small Dublin neighborhood to play in the surrounding woods. Hours later, their maters' calls go unanswered. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children, gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, Detective Rob Ryan - the found boy, who has kept his past a secret - and his partner Cassie Maddox investigate the murder of a twelve-year-old girl in the same woods. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him, and that of his own shadowy past.

My Review

Quite simply, I really liked this book. It wasn't a really fast read for me like many other thriller/mysteries   can be, but it was never slow either. There was always something going on in the book; each chapter kept you wanting to read on and find out what happened! Two murders in the same small, sleepy town and in the same woods. All along you want to find out if the two are connected, even though they happened twenty years apart. The setting of small town Ireland was very charming (despite a murder taking place there) and makes me want to visit even more! :) Detective Ryan is conflicted throughout the book: he struggles to remember what happened in the woods twenty years ago with his two friends, yet doesn't really want to bring back the memories. He was an interesting character; not someone I fell in love with as I was reading, but I didn't dislike him either. Cassie was a fun character. Her relationship with Ryan in the beginning is really fun, and makes you envious of their friendship. I also really liked the character of Rosalind, although she is crazy. Her character, along with the others, was really well developed and she had me fooled! I often found myself wondering how the family was connected to the murder of their daughter/sister, even though the evidence seemed to say they weren't.

I really look forward to reading other novels by Tana French. She's a wonderful story-teller!


Buy on Amazon Buy on Barnes and Nobles