Books I read in August 2012

1. Broken Harbour by Tana French (fiction, Nook)
2. No Second Chance by Harlan Coben (Fiction
3. The Glass Castle Jeanette Walls (non-fiction, memoir)
4. One Breathe Away by Heather Gudenkauf (fiction, Nook)
5. Miracle Cure by Harlan Coben (fiction)
6. Just one Look by Harlen Coben (fiction)
7. One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper (fiction)
8. Triburbia by Karl Greenfield (fiction)

Book 55- Faithful Place

Another wonderful novel from Tana French is Faithful Place. This thriller brings Frank into the limelight. He's the head of the Dublin (Ireland) Undercover squad. And now he's involved in a cold case homicide in his own back yard. His high school girlfriend who vanished on the night he was to run away with her to elope suddenly turns up as a dead body back in his old neighborhood, a place, a faithful Place where he hasn't sent foot in 22 years. Until now.

French continue spinning a fabulous thriller, while not all that complex, is still compelling. Her in depth characterization Frank and those around him still astounds me with every novel of hers I devour. I like that she can take a popular medium like "thriller" and take it into the world of literature with detailed character analysis. This is an excellent story.

And while Frank is a secondary character in her previous two novels, he takes center stage in this one. I appreciate that French keeps her setting and tone consistent but brings out the different characters with every novel. I love the Dublin setting, one of my favorite cities ever. I also love that while these are similar in setting, character and context, these are stand alone novels- they aren't really a series nor do they have to be read in any sort of order to be enjoyed.

Excellent third outing from French and I'm eagerly await more!

Book 41- The Likeness

STOP!!! SPOILER ALERT! And this review is only a spoiler alert to the first book in this series, In The Woods. If you plan to read the novels by Tana French, and haven't read the first one yet, go no further! These two novels are completely tied together! Now, if you don't care and have no desire to read an intricate, complex, and engaging thriller, with well developed characters, an intriguing storyline, and an author who uses words wonderfully, well, then.... by all means, read on!

SPOILER FOLLOWS...


Tana French's second novel The Likeness follows right on the heels of her first one, In The Woods, and picks up a few scant months after it ends, with Cassie Maddox having transferred out of the Murder squad to Domestic Violence and she's in a serious relationship with Sam, and Rob Ryan is gone.

First and foremost, I want to say that The Likeness was about a million times better for me since I read In The Woods. I'm trying to objectively think about if this could be read as a stand alone, and I certainly don't think so. Cassie's mindset and her nerves are still shaken from the case in Woods, and influences all the choices and decisions she makes in this novel.

In The Likeness, the Murder Squad finds a dead body of a young woman who is the doppelganger of Cassie. And not only is this girl identical to Cassie in look, but she has also identity theft Cassie- no, she's not Cassie Maddox Dublin Cop, but she stole her undercover persona, Lexi Madison.

So Cassie goes undercover and pretends to be Lexi, moving in to the house with the 4 other Trinity University grads students with whom she lived. And Cassie manages to pull it off, trying to find her killer, letting people think she was only wounded and critical but recovered. She can work the case from the inside and she's bait, seeing if the killer will come after her again.

This is an excellent novel. I loved it. I think I liked it better than the first one. I love an author who treats readers like they are smart- so French's vocabulary made me happy. I love her words. I also thought she wove an intricate storyline and mystery together that was utterly fascinating.

Her characters are engaging and well throughout. They're interesting and developed. Cassie struggled because of what happened to her in Woods, and it was interesting to see that she carried this guilt, fear, and pain over into this novel. And how it affected how she continued to do her job. Not only was Cassie amazingly developed, but so were the four prime suspects, "Lexi's" housemates.

I liked everything about this novel. I can't wait to see if French writes a third!

Book 18- In the Woods

This was an amazing mystery thriller, a first novel by Tana French, an Irish author who penned In the Woods.

Detectives Cassie Maddox and Rob Ryan are partners and best friends. Never has theirs been a romantic relationship but they are so close, the fellow cops in the Dublin Murder squad thought they were a couple as well.

They get called to a case: a dead 12 year old girl in a wood. Now they have to find her killer.

The twist of it all is, 20 years ago in the same woods, Rob and his 2 best friends were playing and his friends went missing and he went home. They were never heard or seen again. Rob had changed his identify and getting the case of a new dead child was a fluke. It also re-opens all his old wounds and some new memories about his friends.

This is an interesting book because of all the different story lines. Maddox and Ryan are trying to solve the dead girl case, trying to see if it ties into the old case of Ryan's friends. There's the dance between them, that relationship. There's a nice deep look into Ryan and his psyche. These are wonderfully developed characters, with rich narration told first person through Ryan, with vivid detail, but not so much the reader feels incessantly bogged down.

I was impressed all the way around and will be hunting for the next book by French. It's a smart read, and it takes place in Dublin so not only was my intellect challenged and stimulated, I was reading about my "happy place."