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lucybutcher 's review for:
The Secret Place
by Tana French
The Secret Place is easily my favorite of the Tana French Dublin Murder Squad books that I've read so far, and also just one of the best books I've read in a long time. Holy hell. It made me feel so much, and I'm having trouble doing any of it justice, but I'll try. To start, French's depiction of the way teenage friends are sometimes able to live in a kind of shared interior reality was absolutely mesmerizing to me. I had similarly close friends as a teenager (minus, you know, the whole murder bit!) and I don't think I've ever seen anyone describe so perfectly how contagious the feeling of a moment can be among friends at that age, how magical and shared the world can feel. And how incredibly painful it can be when that intimacy falls apart, when you realize for the first time that the things you imagine to be permanent won't all last. Oof. French doesn't just get the feeling of being that age right, though, she gets at the particularities of it with incredible beauty and insight. There are lots of tiny moments from this book that will stick with me for a very long time. On top of that, the pacing, the parallels between the girls' friendships and the growing friendship between Stephen and Conway, and the many other layers to the story made this an incredibly literary read. I highly recommend it, even if you don't typically go for mysteries.