The Likeness by Tana French

Pages (Paperback): 512 pages

Publisher: Penguin

Released: May 26, 2009

Description: Six months after the events of In the Woods, Detective Cassie Maddox is still trying to recover. She's transferred out of the murder squad and started a relationship with Detective Sam O'Neill, but she's too badly shaken to make a commitment to him or to her career. Then Sam calls her to the scene of his new case: a young woman found stabbed to death in a small town outside Dublin. The dead girl's ID says her name is Lexie Madison—the identity Cassie used years ago as an undercover detective—and she looks exactly like Cassie.

With no leads, no suspects, and no clue to Lexie's real identity, Cassie's old undercover boss, Frank Mackey, spots the opportunity of a lifetime. They can say that the stab wound wasn't fatal and send Cassie undercover in her place to find out information that the police never would and to tempt the killer out of hiding. At first Cassie thinks the idea is crazy, but she is seduced by the prospect of working on a murder investigation again and by the idea of assuming the victim's identity as a graduate student with a cozy group of friends.

As she is drawn into Lexie's world, Cassie realizes that the girl's secrets run deeper than anyone imagined. Her friends are becoming suspicious, Sam has discovered a generations-old feud involving the old house the students live in, and Frank is starting to suspect that Cassie's growing emotional involvement could put the whole investigation at risk. Another gripping psychological thriller featuring the headstrong protagonist we've come to love, from an author who has proven that she can deliver.

Review:  I miss Rob. I really miss Rob. *sigh* Will we ever see Rob again? The story, while interesting, isn't plausible. You'll have to suspended your disbelief in order to understand it and it has a lot of holes. This isn't a bad book and it still is beautifully written, but it just didn't have the same magic as In the Woods. It also doesn't answer some of the questions from the last book.


Grade: 7 lines out of 10

In the Woods by Tana French

Pages (Paperback): 464 pages

Publisher: Penguin

Released: May 27, 2008

Description: As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. 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, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox — his partner and closest friend — find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. 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.

Review: In the Woods is a beautifully written mystery that will get you sucked in and wanting more. And when I mean wanting more, I mean wanting more, because the most interesting aspect of the novel never gets solved. It's annoying, frustrating, and it makes you want to scream, but it works. Strange, eh? Lovely novel, it did have some rough spots, but the writing makes up for it.

Grade: 7.5 lines out of 10