Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Secret Place

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Secret Place by Tana French

10 reviews

hdunscombe's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

5.0

Content Warnings

xabbeylongx's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous mysterious tense slow-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

2.0

Spoilers Ahead:

This book was a bit meh, for me. I was so excited for it, and I started off by really enjoying it, and then it just kind of slowly went downhill over the duration of the 20 hours. 20 hours?! That’s such a long time! Having had to read it for uni, I really wanted to finish it, but it took me such a long time to get into it.

We follow multiple different POVs throughout the book. On the one side we follow Detective Stephen Moran, and on the other we follow a group of Holly Mackey, Julia, Selena and Rebecca, a group of girls loyal to each other at a boarding school. Stephen works in Cold cases, although he’s always been desperate to join the Murder Squad. Holly comes into him one day, her father, Mr Mackey, also being a detective, knows Holly well. She gives him a letter, which tells him that someone knows who the killer of Chris Harper is.

Moran takes it to Murder, to Detective Conway, who is in charge. Being a female, she is picked on quite a lot in Murder. He begs Conway to let him on the case, as he has a special bond with Holly that he thinks will get the girls to open up, and she’s reluctant at first, and then begrudgingly agrees.

They go to the school where Holly and the other girls are, and it’s where they found the letter, also. The school where Chris Harper was killed is not too far away, and so it could have been any one of them really. The trail went cold, and until then, they hadn’t really got any leads.

Unfortunately, every single one of them was lying. Not only Holly and her group, but also the rival group - made up of Joanne, Gemma, Orla and Allison. They bring them all in for questioning, and each time they find out something different. For example, that they all used to sneak out, that Selena had a secret relationship with Chris, before breaking up with him. They even found out that Chris used a phone with multiple different girls to cheat on them, because the only thing that he wanted was sex. They found the phone hidden under the bed, and they start unravelling the clues.

Each group blames each other, and each group has good reasons as to why they would want Chris dead. Joanne also dated him, before Selena, and harboured a resentment on him for treating her that way - she was distraught, apparently. But they have no leads. They accuse everyone, but mainly Holly, and they have to get her dad in. Mr Mackey threatens them, and tries to turn Moran and Conway against each other, but they don’t rise to the bait.

Eventually, Rebecca confesses to killing him. I’m still not really sure of the reason as to why, I think it was something to do with her thinking he’s a good person because he helped her save some photos once. I think… it didn’t really make sense to me, why she would do it, but whatever floats your boat, I guess. She says that, even though she’s arrested, she will be reunited with him one day, so I don’t think she turns out to be as sane as some of the others in this book.

Honestly, this book is so long… too long. It didn’t have to be this long. It really didn’t. I like the plot, and I like French’s writing, but god did it go on forever. Took me over a month, at least, to listen to it. I had to speed it up in the end, because I just wanted it to be over. Half of it could have been taken out and it wouldn’t have made any difference to the plot. For example, Julia’s storyline with Finn? What relevance does it have to Chris Harper’s death? None, unless I’m being really stupid and there is a perfectly plausible reason for it. And the ending, about Holly’s mum, why was that in there? Unless there is a link to other books, as I know this is part of a series, so I can understand if it is, but it just doesn’t really seem too important to be honest. Plus, the ending seemed a bit too neat for me, and I’m not a fan of neat endings, as they feel very unrealistic.

Also, some of the parts in this book seemed really questionable. There was a little bit of a sexist undertone throughout, and at one point I felt so shocked that it was written by a woman, because it seemed like such an unrealistic thing that a woman would write. Not only that, but there was constant talk about the girls’ arses (they’re children - is that not just really fucking weird? Like an insane amount of times their bodies or sex was brought up, and it felt very weird and very creepy). It just felt, honestly, quite paedophilic at times. There were times when Moran was ensuring us that he wouldn’t even dream about thinking of the children in that way, but why would that go through his head in the first place? Very, very odd. Big focus on sex within the book, but within children? I don’t think so; that’s uncomfy!

Moving on to characters, I personally really liked Conway at times. I read a review saying that she was a bit of a ‘pick-me’, but I honestly didn’t get that vibe too much, and normally I pick those type of characters up very easily. And I was a massive fan of Julia, and Holly. Julia has the sass and the attitude that I really like in characters, and she’s got undoubted loyalty to all of her friends. I really liked her. I didn’t like Stephen much. His attitude was shit, I thought he was a very whiny man, and way too focused on women’s bodies, especially young girls’ bodies. His creepiness was not masked by a dazzling personality, and so I wasn’t a fan of reading about him too much. Unfortunate, as he is one of the main characters, but we move.

I absolutely adored the layout of this book. The way it switches from one POV to another, it’s so cleverly done, especially as each chapter where a change of POV happens, the writing is interlinked - I think it’s a very seamless transition. Everything is pretty much explained as we’re going along, and I like it when it’s easy to follow. It would have been even easier to follow if it wasn’t almost a day long to read, but other than that, a pretty satisfying read.

Content Warnings

fightandfade's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

mykenzi's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

4.75

Content Warnings

rachelkidd's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.5

Content Warnings

placebogirl's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad 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

4.25

Content Warnings

simonamiller's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious 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? Yes

3.0

I really adored the first third of this book: an interesting premise, complicated well written realistic characters with lots of secrets, alternating timelines, gorgeous lyrical prose, and a touch of magic. All big pros for me. But as the book went on, it really began to drag. It started feeling very repetitive and many of the characters began to annoy me. Also, I was so excited about the magic when it was introduced (the scene where the girls discover their abilities was hands down my favorite scene in the book - so well written!), but then it didn't go anywhere at all. There's a lot I liked about this book, but by the conclusion I didn't love it as much as I was hoping to.

Content Warnings

drbrizzlybear's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

3.75

Content Warnings

isabelgalupo's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional 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? Yes

4.5

My favorite Dublin Murder Squad book to date!

Content Warnings

sheryl_macca's review against another edition

Go to review page

mysterious tense slow-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

3.75

This was my first Tana French and I was immediately struck by the rich detail in her writing. She has a beautiful poetic turn of phrase with the perfect amount of crassness scattered around too.

The Secret Place is a murder mystery. A teenage boy is found dead in the grounds of a girl's boarding school and after a year without any leads a clue lands on Moran's desk. The two detectives are strangers to each other and as their working relationship develops so does the case.

There are two timelines in the book. The main timeline follows the detectives and 8 suspects today. When I say today, I really mean it. All 480 pages of this book only cover one single day. This slow pace allows for tense scrutiny, detailed description and strong character development on a truly luxurious level.

The second timeline is told in flashback from a few weeks prior to the boys death until the night of his murder. These chapters are little gifts left for the reader throughout. They are moments of mundane teenage drama, so realistic that you feel part of the in crowd.

I was kept guessing until the final pages and ultimately the reveal was pretty anti climatic but not in a bad way. It worked. Who did it wasn't the point. What happened on the way to finding out was.

Content Warnings

More...