The Secret Place by Tana French
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My two favorites of Tana French’s books are Faithful Place and Broken Harbor… the writing is consistently great across her books, but the story really sparkles in those two books. The Secret Place isn’t quite as good as those two, though, as I’ve mentioned before, she just writes so well that it’s a pleasure to get back to the little (in this case nearly claustrophobic, but for the scenes at the Court) world of her stories.
The Secret Place is confined to St. Kilda’s, a boarding school outside Dublin, and two cliques of girls particularly, who may or may not have murdered a student from the companion boys’ school. There are a few moments, where, again, as in other books, my willing suspension of disbelief valve wavers and is about to blow, but I can forgive the odd detour into the magical (are the girls practicing real magic? Is it all a mass hallucination? Ms. French kind of addresses it in one neat sentence towards the end of the book) and the (very) occasional trip up by the detectives hunting down the resolution to the crime, because they’re otherwise on the ball and sharp and play well off each other. The book rides a theme of belonging very hard and it touches everything and everyone, not just the teenage girls. Overall, a good read from Tana French, as usual, though maybe not her best.