Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - The Witch Elm

Thanks, I hated it.

Let me start with the one redeeming quality of this book, Tana French can write a damn house! Just like the home in The Likeness, I could picture the Ivy House perfectly! It was cozy (until it wasn’t) and atmospheric and just so vibrantly written.

But that skill is not enough to save this book. Not only is every single character (except Hugo, whom I felt affection for and wanted to see more of) unlikeable, but our protagonist is the *most* unlikeable of the bunch. Seriously. Irredeemably so. I guessed the killer prior to the reveal, but that’s not saying a whole lot as this book is SLOW. And lastly, though frankly most importantly, this book is ableist and fatphobic as FUCK. Like, jarringly so. I felt like I was constantly being pulled out of the story because I was taken aback by the ableist comments. Bad bad bad.

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hnrrouse's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Slooooooow start

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accidentalspaceexplorer's review

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Tana French would be a great spider - she always manages to weave such a complicated web that leaves you asking a lot more questions than just "Who did it?" This one is definitely just as tangled as her other books, although I did mostly guess who had actually done it about 1/3 of the way in.

There are a lot of other reviews saying that they had a hard time liking the book because of Toby, the main character, and I totally understand, although I did not personally feel the same way. He is a privileged man who fundamentally doesn't understand that other people don't share his privilege, and it's difficult to like him for that, but the part that saved it for me was that it was clear that it was a Toby problem. Other people call him out on it very early on, and continue to do so throughout the book.

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ellipalmer's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

It's hard to say much about what I liked about The Witch Elm without venturing into topics that feel like spoilers. It took about 150 pages to get to the meat of the story, which felt like a long time. If it were another author who I didn't know I might have felt annoyed, but in my experience Tana French knows what she's doing. While I still feel like the first 1/3 dragged a bit, pushing through definitely paid off. The writing is top knotch, French a master of plot and psychologically complex character development. I watched an interview with her where she said that she's less interested in "who did it" than "who the detective is" and the impact of the mystery/story on the person trying to work their way through it and find the truth. I think that's what makes her stories so good. You want to know who did it, but the payoff is deeper and longer lasting because solving the mystery doesn't put the world back in order. The detective is forever changed and solving the case doesn't bring the satisfaction and closure they hoped it would.

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