DNF at 50% I spent a long time struggling over this review. I hate insulting my favorite authors. They feel like my friends and I’m betraying them. I ADORE Tana French. In the Woods is one of my all-time favorite mysteries. However, it pains me to say that The Witch Elm, just didn’t do it for me.The Witch Elm deviates from the Dublin Murder Squad construct. In it, Toby, a 20-something art gallery worker, is the victim of a brutal burglary in which he’s left for dead. A severe head injury leaves...

Lucky and genial Toby meets the guys for a night out to celebrate his circumvention of a potentially career-wrecking incident at work. Afterwards, he is nearly beaten to death by intruders and his life changes dramatically. He lands at Ivy House to care for his terminally ill uncle and to recover from his own serious injuries. A skull is found in the Wych Elm which takes this finely crafted novel into the events of the past as experienced by the participants looking back from the present day. Im...

Toby had always thought of himself as a lucky person. He came from a good family, he got along with his aunts, uncles, and cousins, and he had a good job, excellent health, a very nice apartment, and a lovely girlfriend.However, somewhere during his 29th year, he entered into his personal time of Job, where he was tested on every front and since part of that was a burglary of his apartment where he suffered serious injury, he could no longer rely on his wits to carry him through. He was forced t...

Love LOVE and more LOVE for The Witch Elm by the amazing Tana French!!Amicable Toby is a happy-go-lucky guy who fancies himself as one the "The Lucky Ones." He has a great job, although he did create a major mess there  - but he sorted out his mess so it's all good. He has an amazing girlfriend to whom he is faithful, except for a bit of a roving eye. And he has two terrific mates who love him, at least he thinks they do. But Toby's luck is about to change when he is brutally beaten and robbed i...

This review and other non-spoilery reviews can be found @The Book Prescription “These are doctors. I don’t know what kind of social‑ justice‑warrior shite you’ve been reading, but their job is to make people better, if they can. Which sometimes they can’t. That doesn’t mean they’re evil villains rubbing their hands and looking for ways to fuck up people’s lives.”🌟 Have you ever watched a TV series or a film and you knew from the start it is not just for you, but it was interesting enough to make...

After a run of highly successful novels in the Dublin Murder Squad series, Tana French returns with a standalone that has created many waves amongst reviewers on various sites and in the literary world. French’s writing style and plots are surely central to this split, which has reviewers throwing metaphoric punches. Toby Hennessy is out for a weekend chin-wag with his mates at the local pub. When he is well-sauced, he returns home, trying to remember all the nuances of the fragmented conversati...

The Witch Elm by Tana French is a 2018 Viking Books publication. Luck. Toby has never really considered his, until now. He’s always had an easy go of things, able to talk himself out of any potential trouble or situation with his easy charm. But, Toby’s luck has changed overnight. First, he gets into serious trouble with his boss, then his home is broken into, and he is beaten within an inch of his life. While his parents and faithful, adoring girlfriend are rock solid support systems, Toby is i...

I actually didn't love a Tana French book... the world is broken. I just knew I jinxed it by writing that first paragraph in my review of The Secret Place.I keep trying to convince myself to bump this up a star because it's hard to believe Tana French can write anything that isn't amazing. It's definitely not a bad book, but The Witch Elm - French's first standalone outside of her Dublin Murder Squad series - just didn't contain a lot of the stuff I've loved from this author.To start with, I fee...

2 and 4 stars. If I could give this a dual rating, I would! Explanation of rating: I had 5-star expectations for The Witch Elm--Tana French is one of my favorite authors and while I haven’t loved all of her books, I really enjoyed the most recent installments of the Murder Squad series. Unfortunately, my expectations were not met. There were parts of the Witch Elm that I loved, but others not so much. It’s hard to describe The Witch Elm--it’s part mystery, part thriller, part family drama. Prim

after languishing for months who-knows-where, my review is finally up at LARB! https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...#!if you celebrate christmas, read it in line as you last-minute shop. if you do not, enjoy it with all the free time not having to worry about mulberries and double-sided tape and trees going up in flames affords you. ***********************************************oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for best mystery & thriller 2018! what will happen?oh, it will lose to s...

Edited, spoilers hidden 2/23/22The setting is an important part of this story: an old family house* outside of Dublin, nicknamed Ivy House, where two generations ago a whole crowd of brothers and sisters grew up and then their children came for summers, weekends and holidays. It’s now occupied only by the oldest unmarried uncle, slowing dying of a brain tumor. The real mystery begins halfway through the book when a skull is found in a tree cavity by one of the grandkids. But perhaps the mystery

4.25 Stars* (rounded down)There is something about the feeling I get before reading another Tana French novel that calms me and makes me want to sit in a big old comfy chair, with a cushy pillow and a lush blankie surrounding me. I just know that I’m going to be settling in for an in-depth read with highly intelligent, well thought out, interesting characters and I immediately prepare myself. I grab a nice warm cuppa and before I know it, hours have gone by and I am in the thick of it. Such was

NO SPOILERS... .... safe to read....It’s a sin to spoil a Tana French novel.I’ve been reading Tana French since 2007. My memory is clear...I walked into “Borders” looking around...“Into the Woods” was a new release. I had never heard of the author - but liked what the inside flap said, took a blind chance, bought it... came home and inhaled it instantly. I became an ‘annoying’ book pusher. I was telling strangers off the street about the new mystery-thriller author Tana French and her amazing ch...

Apologies to everyone who loves this book, but for me, it’s okay with some good sections thrown cropping up. A superficially likable and self-absorbed main character, Toby, encounters his first care in the world. Well, I’ll cut him some slack. His fortunate circumstances aren’t his fault nor his credit. But no, the more I know him the less that I like him.I know! He is severely injured from a brutal beating during home invasion burglary and only saved from death by receiving superb medical care

3.5 In this rather lengthy stand alone, French again explores the sense of identity, as well as the question, How well do we really know another person? Three cousins, children of four brothers, who have all spent their summers, vacations from school at the house where their unmarried Uncle Hugh lives. Grown up now, not as close as they once were, they all come together after Toby is attacked in his apartment and left for dead. Although he makes it, he has lingering effects from the attack, one

Wow. This is a very different novel for Tana French. Still wonderful writing and still more than one mystery to solve, but this isn’t a detective-tracking-down clues story. Instead, the first big thing doesn’t happen until about thirty pages in, and the second really big thing doesn’t happen until you’re well into the novel. This allows for serious character development not just of the protagonist, Toby, but of the supporting cast as well. I found myself incredibly invested in how things would t...

I had only read one book before from this author and that was “The Trespasser” which I loved. This book was just an o.k. read for me, here’s why.I’m getting a bit tired of unreliable narrators, this seems to be a trend lately. Toby is about as unreliable as you can get since he has suffered a severe brain injury right at the beginning of the story. It all starts, as he states, on the night that he walked home from the pub to his house quite drunk and went to bed without turning on the door alarm...

Tana French writes a densely compelling and complicated character driven psychological drama that is a slow burner, set in Dublin. Toby Hennessy is a privileged young man, an only child, secure and confident, living a charmed life with the luck of the Irish, and an inherent ability to talk himself out of dicey scenarios with ease. After a night out with long term friends, Sean and Dec, Toby makes his way home, and wakes up to find two men burgling his flat who leave him for dead, shattering his

I will not be rating this. I got to 100 pages and calling it.This is my first DNF for the year!! :(My thoughts so far:Why did you write such a boring character Tana French?!I don't care for the main character of Toby and the story is boring. I know there is a mystery coming up but I don't care at this point. I'm not sure why she wrote a 500 page book and it takes until the 1/2 way point of the book to get to the mystery.I can understand character development but not when it's 200+ pages of it an...

DNF - No rating - will not be included in my 2018 book challenge. Oh man, I was so excited for this one. When I saw it as an auto download I nearly screamed before hitting that button. I even gushed to my Goodreads friends to hurry up and grab a copy. Ooops. My bad. Tana French is a skilled writer without a doubt but this book went on and on and on and on and on. The pacing was slow as molasses. I honestly don't care about anything that's happening or the people it is happening to.Maybe my timin...