I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Netgalley advance copy and couldn't wait to read the latest Tana French novel. Though the pacing was a bit too slow for me, it still had the simmering psychological aspects that I so love in her writing. The protagonist in this story is the victim rather than a murder detective. French revisits similar themes and settings, but as usual, by the time I got to the end I was, and am still, thinking about what it all means - in a good way!

I had high hopes for this book, the synopsis sounded fascinating. Sadly, I was disappointed. I found a lack of sympathetic characters, and by the time I reached an obvious key event I really didn't care what happened or why. The lead character is singularly unlikable - whining, self-obsessed, entitled. While characters don't need to be entirely positive, I found nothing to engage with here. He is surrounded by a family and social circle who all appear to dislike, if not actively loath one another.
I appreciate that this style has its devotees, but I found it overlong and slow.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book, it almost has mini stories running through it and has you questioning so much of what is going on. Well written.

I read this book off the back of a Stephen King article in the New York Times where he described it as an extraordinary book, and in my opinion it certainly didn't disappoint.

There's something about a book that is 500+ pages that has to be written in a compelling enough way to keep my interest for that long, and Tana French managed to achieve this for all 620 of them.

All the characters are firmly believable, the story itself is excellent (once again, believable), and the writing style kept me both gripped and interested throughout. It was one of those stories where you don't find out what actually happened very close to the end, and a manner of suspects were plausible. It all unravelled to an excellent end with a little added surprise too!

I was delighted that I got hold of this book and will certainly be going back to The Dublin Murder Squad books.

I have only read one other book by Tana French before - the first installment of the Dublin Murder Squad ("In The Woods") - but I never really wanted to pick up another one. However, "The Wych Elm" is a standalone novel and it sounded intriguing - after one fateful night the main character's life is changed unrecognizably, and shortly afterwards a gruesome discovery makes him question what does he really know about his life, his past and his family. I really enjoyed the book - in fact I stayed up till late at night to finish it (always a sign of a truly absorbing book)! There is not much action here, but the attention of the author concentrates on the main character, Tony, who is robbed and beaten nearly to death, and afterwards struggles with different health issues, including memory loss. Having moved to his uncle's house he hopes to recover physically and psychologically, but instead, he needs to deal with a police investigation, which turns his life further upside down. His closest family and friends seems to hold different memories of his life than he does, his digging in the past also upsets his girlfriend, and his friends come up with some unwanted truths. All this means that the reader also revises their opinion about the characters - their motives, actions and if they are actually likeable. But be warned, if you like fast action - this is a slow psychological thriller, building the tension step by step till the unexpected ending. I am very happy that I have read this book - whereas gory action packed crime novels are not my thing at all, I am slowly starting to appreciate psychological thrillers which make you think.

I enjoyed this story. It was well written, and the characters were well developed. The atmosphere of a family with secrets was well paced and believable. Overall I would recommend it.

This is perhaps a long read, but I think that's deliberate .. we are seeing Toby's makeup and by extension, his friends. They feel they own the world, their small sins are dismissable .. and that's what hearkens in his case when a PR exercise goes wrong. Beaten to within an inch of his life, things spiral down as those accumulated lapses, and short cuts of the privileged kick in too protect and cocoon these people .. Susannah whose lethal reaction to sexual harassment we sense was hopelessly inevitable says it : my action was ruthless but I discovered I always was. And these self confident wealthy types can rely on such inherent character traits to see them through beating, trials, even prison and coping with cops. Really intriguing and brilliant analysis of what less well heeled, well educated would not have escaped: murder and betrayals.

Absolutely brilliant - she is one of the very best crime/thriller writers around. The writing is outstanding, the characters fully believable, the mood and sense of place deeply sinister. Unputdownable.

It took me a little while to get into this, but once I did, I could not stop reading it. So gripping.

This is an excellent book about family loyalties, of what we think we know against what actually happened and of how we very rarely see ourselves as others see us. This is juxtaposed with the main character's recovery from a severe brain injury, the illness of a pivotal family member and the destruction of relationships through deceit and secrecy. All of this sounds both depressing and complicated but in no way is it anything but enthralling and descriptively clear. The story flows and everything fits together in such a way that although no stone is left unturned it isn't until the very end that you discover just how insignificant the first step was and how complete your knowledge now is.

I was gripped from the very start; the first person voice of Toby drew me straight in and didn't relax its grip until the end. We follow him and discover things as he does. The home of his youth, now beginning to decay along with his rose coloured view of his childhood, becomes both Toby's salvation and his prison. He has to grapple with his own mortality as well as the realisation that he has never been as cool, comfortable and in control as he'd imagined himself to be.

In many books I've read recently the action tapers off towards the end as there are inconsequential loose ends to tie up. This wasn't the case here and I was surprised at the final turn of events which with hindsight would have left the story incomplete had they happened any differently.

I was able to read an advanced copy of this novel thanks to Netgalley in return for an unbiased review and have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone who enjoys a baffling murder, a family drama and a character driven story, as this book has all that and more.

I’ve not previously read Tana French, and, having initially not read the blurb properly i recalled it as being a horror. It isn’t in a classic horror sense, but it’s a horrifying insight into the recovery from a traumatic brain injury at the same time as attempting to uncover a mystery based around the Wych Elm in the old family home. The lengthy, twisty, tale flies by with a cracking mix of family drama, crime, revenge thriller and an unreliable narrator with memory problems. It’s expertly constructed and i fully bought into the relationships and was able to take the more unlikely developments as realistic...ish!

This story is about Toby. He is one of those really lucky people. He is good looking, charming, has a great job and lovely understanding girlfriend until one night everything changes. His life starts to go downhill rapidly.

It is quite hard to describe this book. It is part mystery, part family drama, part character study. As a person who normally shies away from longer books this kept me interested despite the lack of action for a big part of the book. Saying that I felt that this book could have been cut down quite a bit.

I have read all of the previous novels by Tana French and have loved them all. This did not disappoint and, although different, I found this exceptionally good.

The story is told from the viewpoint of Toby, who is from a privileged background and upbringing. One night his whole world changes when he is attacked in his own home and the world he knew no longer exists. He struggles to cope with it all and decides to go back to the ancestral home to look after a dying uncle.

A discovery is made in the back garden in the Wych Elm tree and the family have their lives turned upside down.

This is outstandingly well written and at times graphically unnerving. Loved it.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Books UK, Viking and Tana French for my ARC in return for my honest review.

Excellent read and highly recommended.

My Thanks to Netgalley and Viking for an A R C of this book. I’d heard much about Tana French but never actually read any of her work. And I liked the sound of the synopsis. So this seemed a good opportunity. Unfortunately wrong. From the beginning it just didn’t grab me. I read for personal pleasure and regrettably I got none of that from this novel. I gradually found it not so much un-put-down able as un-pick up-able.

It’s set in Dublin and centres around Toby, a twenty something who has always led a charmed life. He came from a well heeled middle class family, was educated at an expensive private school and then university. Everything has always gone well for him, he has the best of everything and he seems to feel entitled, if he thinks about anything much at all. Then things do start to go seriously wrong for him when he is attacked within an inch of his life by burglars who break into his up market flat, which of course he owns and take , amongst other things, his Porsche .He spends many weeks in hospital, only partially recovering. The family arrange for him to go and stay at the family home, The Ivy House, to keep his Uncle Hugo company as he deteriorates from a terminal brain tumour. His girl friend, the long suffering Melissa goes with him. His cousins, of the same age with whom he has grown up, make frequent appearances at The Ivy House.. It was all very depressing. I just didn’t want to read pages of introspection, self pity and self analysis. I wasn’t interested. It was a third of the way into the book before the scull turned up in the Wych Elm tree and I thought perhaps we might be getting somewhere. But no. It was more of the same slow analysis.

It was taking me an awfully long time to get through it, but I had requested it so I persevered. That is until I got nearly 50% in and I just had to give up. I dipped through the other half to see where the story was going.. I felt guilty about this but just couldn’t take any more. I was finding it deeply depressing which means that the writing must have been good to produce even this negative reaction. I had to ask myself two questions. Was this book well written ? Yes probably. Did you enjoy it ? No, definitely not. Reading other reviews it seems that this book may not be typical of Tana French’s work. Perhaps I’ll try another of her novels - - - sometime in the future.

I am a massive fan of the Tana French Dublin Murder Squad books so I was excited to receive this but unfortunately it fell a bit flat. It just seemed a bit slooow. The premise was good but felt like a bit of a chore reading it - which I'm disappointed about. Had it been any other author this may have been a more positive review but I guess that I was expecting a lot and it just didn't deliver :(

My first Tana French so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was pleased to see it was a stand-alone novel but daunted by its bulk, needlessly as it turned out since it is absolutely absorbing and the pages flew by. A mystery for sure, a police procedural too, but mostly this is an exploration of identity and the effect a person’s self-image and the image they project to others has on their lives.

Tana French writes characters so well and, for me, these are the main strength of the book. With the exception of the unlikely elfin creature, Melissa, whose role seems to be to flit in and out sprinkling fairy dust on occasions that threaten to become too gloomy and maudlin, the characters created are spot on, utterly believable and engaging. I was especially taken with the cool and calculating detective Rafferty.

Toby’s experience is central. Before his head injury, he had been one of the ‘lucky ones’, sailing through life effortlessly, never expecting anything less than success and oblivious to others’ difficulties. When he no longer comes across as an alpha male and finds himself no longer treated as one, and when people remind him of events that he either remembers differently or doesn’t remember at all, his confidence is shaken and he is forced to reassess himself - how can the Toby he used to be and the Toby he is now be versions of the same person at all? Terrifically well written and totally riveting.

The Wych Elm by Tana French a four-star read that will suck you deep. This one was a difficult one for me, at times I couldn’t get through the pages quick enough and then at others I struggled to finish one page. I couldn’t decide on a rating to give it, I veered between two and five through different parts of the novel, but overall, I did enjoy it. Watching Toby as he goes through this massive traumatic event and then watching his life unfold after the event and how he goes about figuring life now that its not what he expected, it was like getting into someone’s head and seeing inside in real life. There was just that deep a level of character development and history to them. I haven’t read anything by this author, so I don’t know if it’s different from other works written, but I will have to see about picking them up and giving one of them a whirl.

This book is not for me. I struggled to engage with the storyline. The characters were rather unpleasant. Personally I found it to be a difficult read.

As a big fan of the Dublin Murder Squad books, I was really excited to be able to read this book via NetGalley. Very near the start of the book is a brutal and shocking attack, and then the pace slows down as we follow the recovery and subsequent events in the life of the narrator Toby. Very diffierent in tone and momentum from her detective books Tana French is more in exploratory mood, creating background and atmosphere as the story rather meanders. I do think the book is rather too long, and as a result there were periods when I was tempted to skip read to move the plot along. However, certainly a very well written and interesting book, and will certainly have me looking out for more Tana French ‘standalone’ novels.

I've loved all of Tana French's detective novels and was expecting another similar novel here. However 'The Wych Elm' is very different, telling the complicated tale of an apparently isolated crime from the point of view of that victim, rather than the detective. It is a very slow burn, particularly at the beginning, but repays your persistence if you stick with it, turning into an interconnected series of events and unintended consequences and finally into a satisfying revelation of the threads that tie into the initial crime. It uses a clever mixture of nostalgic memories of a simpler age and modern technology as a backdrop to the unfolding discoveries and explores the gradual recovery of those involved. I found it an engrossing, sometimes unsettling read, which was well worth seeing through to the end.