Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Likeness by Tana French

30 reviews

erink87's review against another edition

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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Murder

mama_vees_reads's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Murder

Moderate: Gun violence and Suicide

Minor: Abortion

cfell's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Grief, Murder, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

bootsmom3's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Murder, Pregnancy, and Alcohol

Moderate: Gore, Homophobia, Miscarriage, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Sexual content, Suicide, Abortion, Fire/Fire injury, and Classism

iris_lpb's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.75

I also read In the woods, while both share an original plot, well-written characters and great writing, this one is my favorite. One of the best books I read! You go girl!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder

natashaball's review against another edition

dark tense fast-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder

Moderate: Toxic relationship

placebogirl's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse and Murder

Moderate: Child abuse, Misogyny, and Rape

Minor: Pregnancy

piscero's review against another edition

emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Blood

Moderate: Murder

e_flah's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

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

1.0

The Likeness was honestly a bit of a disappointment for me. This was my first Tana French book and I've been hearing wonderful things about her for ages. The first hundred or so pages of The Likeness seemed promising. The characters were interesting, particularly the main character Cassie, and I was intrigued enough to be patient about the fact it was taking ages to get to the murder described in the blurb.

Things started to go downhill for me around the 35-40% mark. There was a lot of tension in the book between whether the story was dark academia or a murder mystery. I've read plenty of dark academia books that include murder but the story typically frames the crime as something the reader will learn more about as the story unfolds rather than something the main character is supposed to be actively trying to solve.

This brings me to what is probably my number one gripe about The Likeness. Cassie is a HORRIBLE detective. She regularly forgets that she's undercover for the express purpose of finding some suspects in the murder of Lexie Madison. Cassie doesn't do a lot of sleuthing and the amount of disassociating she does while undercover just never made sense. It wasn't clear to me if Cassie was supposed to be an unreliable narrator or if she was just incredibly bad at remembering why she was undercover. As this is the premise the whole story hinges on, the fact that it didn't make sense to me made enjoying The Likeness increasingly difficult as time went on.

I had really hoped that the traditional wrap-up at the end of a mystery would explain this but was disappointed there as well.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Gun violence and Murder

PTSD

fionac326's review against another edition

mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Murder