Book Review: Tana French's The Secret Place

After reading Broken Harbor I decided to keep going with the Dublin Murder Squad series so that I wouldn't forget the characters. I had taken so long to keep going with the series in the past that this time I made it a priority to keep going with the series. I like French's writing style and I like how her style changes with her characters. The Secret Place was next up in my reading queue. 

The main character that this story is told through is Detective Stephen Moran - and I couldn't quite remember the other detectives in the Squad room from previous books. I don't really want to go back to read them though because I have so many books on my to-read list, I just wanted to read the book.

The mystery was good but also in a way, a bit predictable. I like how French captures the dramatic teen moments (or what seems to be dramatic by adult standards) and really makes them stand out showing that teens really do live day by day and moment by moment and live to avoid embarrassment almost at all costs. And friendships - the way the friendships were described and written were very realistic, the keeping of secrets between teens and thinking secrets are ok, the keeping secrets to possibly protect one another but because it's four girls, the keeping of secrets goes just terribly wrong. Someone ends up dead. And one of the four girls knows something.

Now should I tell spoilers? Is anyone actually planning on reading the book? 

I'm going to spoil from here so stop reading this now if you're planning on reading the book.

I'm not sure I can follow the believability of how the detectives get together as a team - however, the book only takes the courses of action over one whole day. The beginning of the day is started in the office, the end of the day the murderer is caught and sprinkled between the investigation is the interweaving stories of the dead boy and the four girls.

There's also this weird magic witchery shit that's in the book that I don't think is relevant at all. That could have been left out - it's literally one girl making light bulbs pop and moving objects. The first time I read it, I thought nope, cut this shit out. It really had no serious affect on the outcome of the story. At all. The editors should have caught that crap and cut it all out of the book - it was just added words that didn't need to be part of the story. 

Overall, I thought the mystery was good but I kept thinking I was missing something when the actual killer was revealed - if you pay attention to the small details, you'll be able to spot the killer from the  beginning. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. 

Happy reading, friends!