The Secret Place in Around the World in 80 Books

Sep 05, 2021 Colleen Chi-Girl rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobooks, women-centered, ireland-irish, 2021, thrillers, crime-mysteries

I thought it was me, I thought it was listening to it on an audiobook, but I couldn't wait to finish this book, and for it to just end. There are books that I will "DNF" but not yet a Tana French novel. This novel and #6 have been less than thrilling and just a drag to read.

Here's what I enjoyed: the detectives from this series of course, but they were hardly in this novel. I like the school setting, eerie and interesting, from someone without a boarding school background. There were some good t ...more

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May 08, 2014 Jessica rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, ireland

French is one of my favorite authors, and this one demonstrates why. On the surface, a book focused on a single day of investigation in a private Catholic girls' school seems like it would be claustrophobic and trite, or a middling attempt at a young/new adult audience. But in French's more-than-capable hands, she brings out a full cast of teen girls with real personalities that don't get overwhelmed by the breathlessness of their age. They're teenagers and they know it, but each has her own lev ...more

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Sep 04, 2017 Tony rated it liked it

Shelves: crime, novels, setting-ireland, comingofage

This is third of French's "Dublin Murder Squad" books I've read and there's a definite pattern to them: each has been a minutely detailed procedural murder mystery with sharply honed psychological insights into all the characters, but undercut by wildly absurd premise.

Here, the murder case is about a year old -- the unsolved killing of a popular teenage boy found on the grounds of a girl's boarding school. At the school, there's a bulletin board where girls can anonymously post messages, and a m This is third of French's "Dublin Murder Squad" books I've read and there's a definite pattern to them: each has been a minutely detailed procedural murder mystery with sharply honed psychological insights into all the characters, but undercut by wildly absurd premise.

Here, the murder case is about a year old -- the unsolved killing of a popular teenage boy found on the grounds of a girl's boarding school. At the school, there's a bulletin board where girls can anonymously post messages, and a message indicating that someone knows something about the murder is posted one day. This brings together Det. Moran from the cold case squad with Det. Conway from the murder squad (whose case it originally was), as well as Det. Mackey from the undercover squad (whose daughter goes to the school). At the heart of the detectives' combined attenion are two cliques of girls -- one group of "popular" girls and another of "weirdos."

The story unfolds in chapters that alternate between the present day investigation at the school that is reopened due to the bulletin board note, and flashbacks to the months leading up to the murder. The present is told through the voice of Det. Moran, who is hoping that helping to solve this might be his golden ticket onto the murder squad. The flashbacks are in voices of the various girls, and are mostly keen insights into the emotional drama of teen life.

It's a mostly effective back-and-forth, and the contrast between the investigation, which takes place over a single day, and the backstory, which spans a year, is clever. Moran's cautious and canny attempts to leverage the case without irritating the intimidating Conway are great, as are all the various twists and turns of the procedural angle. However, the reveal as to who did it and why, kind of beggars belief, relying on the reader's willingness to buy into the massive irrationality of teenagers. Even worse, the climactic confession scene relies on an absurd insinuation of the murdered boy's ghost haunting the killer, and is a complete cop-out when laid next to the rest of the story. ...more

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Feb 13, 2017 Sarah rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5 stars. This book takes us into the lives and drama of eight 15-year-old girls at a boarding school. I really enjoy French's books and the investigative processes of her detectives. I also like how there are always unanswered questions because that's life, isn't it? This one is a little different from the others though because (view spoiler). Was it real? Was it all the girls' imaginations? Who can say? ...more

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Nov 16, 2019 Nadine in NY Jones rated it liked it

Shelves: mystery, detective-mystery, audio, ireland

People are complicated. When you’re a little kid, you don’t realize. You think people are just one thing. But then you get older, and you realize it’s not that simple. Chris wasn’t that simple. He was cruel, and he was kind, and he didn’t like realizing that. It bothered him, that he wasn’t just one thing, I think it made him feel ... it made him feel fragile. Like he could break into pieces any time, because he didn’t know how to hold himself together.

The story alternates between present da

People are complicated. When you’re a little kid, you don’t realize. You think people are just one thing. But then you get older, and you realize it’s not that simple. Chris wasn’t that simple. He was cruel, and he was kind, and he didn’t like realizing that. It bothered him, that he wasn’t just one thing, I think it made him feel ... it made him feel fragile. Like he could break into pieces any time, because he didn’t know how to hold himself together.

The story alternates between present day, which is one year after the murder of Chris Harper, when evidence presented by Holly Mackie opens the cold case and Detectives Stephen Moran and Toni Conway re-open the investigation on the campus of St Kildare’s, and the recent past, counting down to Chris’s death, which mostly involves petty politics between the groups of girls at Kildare’s. The back-and-forth slows the pace of the story, and I wasn’t terribly interested in the girls. I wanted more police procedural, less queen bee back stabbing.

This is a story about the power of friendship, and there just happens to be a murder mystery in the background. As with all Tana French novels, this story is about the characters more than it is about the plot, and since I wasn’t really invested in these characters, I was never really invested in the story, either.

This is a really long book, considering the investigation of the cold case all takes less than one day, about twelve hours. I think I spent more time listening to this audiobook than Detectives Conway and Moran spent solving the case!

The girls’ sections were incredibly slow, and slightly annoying, because teen girls don’t actually talk that way. It’s almost like French has never met any teenagers, so she just watched the movie Clueless and based all her teen dialogue on that. (NOTE: my 16 yo daughter heard part of this book and confirmed that teens do NOT speak like this. No one actually says “oh-em-gee” lie that, for example.)

I can see French took some elements from this book - friendship, loyalty, bonding over shared past experiences, cliques, and bullying, among others - and explored them again in Witch Elm.

Moran frequently refers to a previous case when he interviewed Holly Mackie, but I can’t remember the details so every time he mentioned this, it frustrated me. I tried to find a detailed recap of Faithful Place to remind myself of Moran’s role back then with Frank and Holly (“I’d only done what Frank wanted,” Stephen muses now. But what???)

Detectives Toni Conway (murder) & Stephen Moran (cold case) ...more

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Aug 12, 2015 Grainne rated it it was amazing

So I really really liked it - I got it kind of by accident, but I was swept away in the dreamy magic of girlhood and friendship.

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Jul 14, 2019 Rebecca Manery rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, detective-fiction, favorite-author

Tana French writes like an angel.

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Sep 14, 2014 Agatha Donkar Lund rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, mystery, 2014

Weird and delightful and sad.

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Jul 30, 2014 Andy Plonka rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: src

This was not as good as her previous ones. Way too much teenage angst. I liked the format in which French picked one of her major characters from In the Woods and focused on a different character in subsequent books. This did not appear to be the case in this offering. Still she really does have a way with words and her presentation is spot on.

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Apr 01, 2014 Madeleine rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: series, mystery-thriller, smart-nonannoying-entertaining

I liked this better than the last two books, but not as well as In the Woods or The Likeness. I like to think that this book sheds a tiny bit of light on what could have *actually happened* in In the Woods, though. Maybe. Sort of. Maybe I just need to accept the fact that we are never going to find out what really happened there.

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May 30, 2014 mstan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, kindle, irish, src-winter-2014-15

Read like a more sophisticated YA novel, but the multiple perspectives (not structured in any way) and multitude of characters (eight girls and two detectives) made this seem bloated. And much as French tries to pull you into the heady world of teenage girls, she can't shield you from glimpsing reality ever so often. ...more

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