My brain often wrestles with the wonder of letters. How twenty-six letters arranged into words. Turned into paragraphs. Filling up pages. Occupying our brain. How these letters turn into wonder. How the magicians who wield them can make them dance and weave. Do their bidding and inject into us all sorts of emotions. Push us to places we would not go on our own. Poison us with thoughts and plots and people.

Tana French is a magician. She is everything I love about fiction. She hooks me into a style of storytelling that I am not always a fan of. Fiction is fickle. We all are not going to like the same thing. French often tells a story like the eating of an artichoke. You pull off the outer pieces and you eat them. They are not always completely done. Some of those outer pieces are rough but you keep digging. Piece by piece you pull off the leaves and consume them. The deeper you get into the artichoke, the better it is. The flavor expands. Your tastes buds are tickled. Than you get to the heart of it. All the prickly artichoke thorns out of the way you are presented with the fur. You know underneath it is the prize. So you carefully scrape the choke off. Then all your work is paid for with the delicious finish line.

French takes her time. I don’t always like this. Pacing is a tricky thing but all her books have this trait in common. They pick up steam and barrel to the finish line. This book was no exception. Unsurprisingly, I loved it. There always comes a point in all French books where it becomes almost impossible to put it down. You just can’t wait to see how she gets to the heart of it. She is an expert plotter and her characters are always engaging.

I don’t like to talk too much about plot because that is for you to discover. So here is my bare minimum. Young friends at a boarding school suspect that one of their own is guilty of a murder that took place a year ago. Unable to live with it any longer one of them tosses out a fishing line to hook the police back into the investigation. The story than is told through two alternating plot lines. The police investigation and the girl’s viewpoints months before the murder.

All of French’s books are stand-alone books which take place in a shared world with characters over lapping. This one is no different. While you can read it without reading any of the earlier books I would not recommend it. I think you would lose a little of the tension. So if you are fan of the series, what are you waiting for? Go read it. If you have never picked one up then head out and grab a copy of In The Woods and enjoy the ride.
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I almost gave up on this book when I realized that there was magic. It seemed like cheating -- I loved [b:Broken Harbor|13123877|Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad, #4)|Tana French|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1330675374s/13123877.jpg|15718578] for its grittiness and realness and I was worried that would be lost in The Secret Place. But it turned out that for me, the key to really getting Tana French books was embracing the magical realism here. The mental gymnastics I had to do to reach a place where magical realism was okay for me in her books led me to realize that there's a flavor of magical realism in all her books. Not literally, of course, but her books are to traditional murder mysteries the way that magical realism is to traditional fantasy: they aren't about murder, they use crimes as a lens to reflect upon the traits in real life that are difficult to explore in pure "literary" fiction.

And in that context, French is a genius. The Secret Place uses its central mystery to explore the tight friendships of teenage years, and how empowering and close they can be. The four main characters are depicted perfectly, achingly nuanced -- almost like someone that I've known and drifted away from myself. The overall effect was one of extreme, almost overwhelming nostalgia, so much so that the ( )

This was brilliant. So many angles of a story all swirling around and through each other. Back and forth in time lines, baddies, goodies...but who is a baddie or a goodie when it's all said and done?

My favourite thing about French's books is the interactions of her characters. You can see their facial expressions and hear the exhalation of breath from them when they are caught off guard, see every side glance. She sticks you right in the middle of everything and then, God help you. ( )

Just read it. Tana French is an awesome writer, all of her books leave you guessing until the last chapter. That's all I can say. Read it. ( )

Es el quinto de la serie y hasta ahora el que más me gustó . muy bien construido, en realidad podríamos decir que es una novela de iniciación más que un policial. Una muerte en un internado adolescente, pone en juego los afectos, las amistades de un grupo de adolescentes enfrentadas a otro. Celos primeros amores, pérdidas, familia, todos esos puntos aparecen y el link que los une es que una de las comprometidas es la hija del Detective Mackey, Holly a quien habíamos encontrado en una novela anterior. altamente recomendable, se puede leer independientemente de la anterior ( )