BOOK REVIEW: The Secret Place By Tana French

The Secret Place by Tana French
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got of copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The key characters are eight teenage girls, members of rival cliques. Chris Harper, a teenage boy, is murdered on St. Kilda’s grounds. The initial police investigation is inconclusive. A year later, 16-year-old Holly volunteers information to Moran. She has discovered a picture of Chris, along with the statement “I know who killed him”, posted on a school bulletin board called the “Secret Place”. Moran is assigned to work with senior detective Antoinette Conway to investigate. Moran and Conway question all eight girls and find that there were some close relationships between Chris and most of the eight girls. After further investigation, they find evidence that links Chris’s murder to Holly’s clique. When the detectives grill Holly, her father, detective Frank Mackey, intervenes and complicates the investigation.”

My Review Tana French is a very talented writer but it took me forever to finish this book as I got bogged down with the Irish teenage slang. The chapters alternated between the present time with the detectives' investigation of the teenagers and the re-telling of the past before the murder of Chris Harper.

I feel as though this would be a more pleasurable book if the editors cut it back somewhat. I think the plot is a good one and reminded me of Donna Tartt's The Secret History. I enjoyed Tana's other books but I'm not sure that I'll read another if it's as wordy as this one.


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