A review by e_flah
The Likeness by Tana French

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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