This was a hard rating to give!

I am a HUGE Tana French fan. HUGE. So sitting here thinking about this book, I’m like what was this? This felt like nothing like her older books. The writing felt like a completely different author.

I will never downgrade a review based on not liking a character … BUT WHO WERE THESE PEOPLE? They didn’t make sense. There were just pages and pages of whining by Toby. It was honestly just horrible.

It took until 175 pages to even get to the ‘interesting’ part of the story. I still don’t understand why the first 175 pages even mattered. What was point of the beginning part. The story should have started at the Ivy House. Felt so forced.

The ‘misleading’ directions/conversations were also really annoying – it was unnecessary. It was not cleverly done.

I only finished this book because it was French, but if this was any other author I would have set it down.

I don’t even want to bother spending too much time writing a negative review. I will say, if this is your first French book don’t write her off. Don’t judge her based off of this book because this does not represent the true ‘Tana French’ that I think a lot of people know.