brittybb 's review for:

The Witch Elm by Tana French
3.0
I really only write reviews so I can remember how it ended later. This book was really not my style. I'm an impatient reader so I hate long drawn out roundabout stories and that's exactly what this was. It starts with a drawn out description of Toby (the narrator)'s job as a PR agent for an art gallery. Then they talk about how he fibbed a bit to sell a painting and he almost loses his job, to blow off steam, he goes out with his friend. when he gets home he gets mugged by some burglers and we spend hours hearing about his recovery. He eventually decides to move in to his sick uncles house to care for him, while he himself recovers. Literal hours of reading later we get to the main point in which a body is found in a tree on the property who comes to be know as a high school pal of Toby's. Toby remembers almost nothing because of his accident and starts thinking maybe he killed the guy. We eventually find out that it was his 2 cousins who killed him because he'd been messing with them/ sexually harassing them. Toby's uncle confessed to the murders because he knew it was one of his family members responsible and since he was a bout to die, he may as well take the fall. The cousins have literally no remorse for the murder and kind of joke around about it. They also don't feel bad for making Toby think he may have done it nor for allowing their uncle to be remembered as a murderer. Toby kind of spirals and lives in his uncles house alone for awhile after this all goes down and then one day the lead detective comes by and basically tells Toby he was trying to pin it on him because he knows he could have made him look guilty. This is were the book lost me completely. Toby is so mad at the cop he punches him, they wrestle around for an absurd amount of time before the cop hits his head on a rock and dies. Toby knows he will go to prison so he tries to kill himself, fails, gets let off for the murder because "the cop surprised him and he thought it was a burgler" he goes on to live a shitty life. The book was long, drawn out, depressing, and so unrealistic with the absurd series of events that play out. I dont think it was a bad book at all but it wasn't for me