Reviews - In The Woods | The StoryGraph

7.63k reviews for:

In The Woods

Tana French

3.71 AVERAGE

tippelskirchi's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-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

helal66's review against another edition

4.0

Didn't record this when I read it, yet I definitely did! Strange.

mzchoate's review against another edition

4.0

emotional mysterious medium-paced

princehal's review against another edition

3.0

torn between giving this 3 and 4 - for the most part i enjoyed reading it, but there is definitely a difference between allowing a traumatised character to behave unpredictably and badly and forcing uncharacteristic behaviour in order to isolate the protagonist and justify his errors. this is ESPECIALLY galling when the author then does a Bit where she has the protagonist say, "ah, but YOU also didn't know who the murderer was, right?? X fooled you too!" and... actually, no, X was behaving incredibly suspiciously all the way through, there was clearly something going on there.

despite my complaints, i *did* like the book, i enjoyed reading this after the likeness even though they are intended to be read the other way round, and tana french really does a wonderful job of evoking ireland.

papercupmixmaster's review against another edition

4.5

dark mysterious fast-paced

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Wow the narrator sucks I hate that guy

sleepyshibito's review against another edition

1.0

This almost a 1.5 for me. I just could not stand the characters.

SPOILER FREE

Ryan's infatuation with a teenage girl was really off-putting and creepy, along with him just not being likable in general. I went from being neutral to hating him by the end of the book.

Cassie's character felt like an attempt at a manic pixie dream girl without much real charm to her. Also weird how Ryan kept describing her as childlike??

And what happened to French's writing quality whenever Rosalind appeared??? Her character was so poorly written, it felt like I was sudden reading a teenager's Wattpad story.

All that is to say, I actually didn't mind what many others have issues with, I don't mind long winded descriptions and I didn't mind the ending, however the killer was extremely obvious to me so that was very disappointing once i realized.

also if I have to read "her little teeth" one more time im gonna lose it

Edit:// SPOILER:

Spoiler

I wanted to say that I'm aware that Ryan is supposed to be a psychopath, there are several hints eluding to this throughout the book. I admit that does make me appreciate Ryan's character slightly more and I know we aren't supposed to like him. But it was still, overall, not an enjoyable read as a whole for me.