This book has quite a good plot line and several surprises during its course but the middle section is rather rambling and so, in my opinion, the novel is overlong. The main character became rather tedious to me but I was intrigued enough to want to get to the end of the story. All in all the book could have been half the length but still a good yarn.

I loved this! I'm a big fan of the Dublin Murder Squad series and was excited by the chances to read something else by the same author. Excellent mystery story with well-realised characters, and a few surprises. I read it in a couple of sittings and only regret not taking a little longer to enjoy the story.

Tana French is a master of the tense drama/thriller genre, and The Wych Elm is no exception. I feel as though she was maybe itching to get away from the Dublin Murder Squad series and stretch her fingers a bit, and she’s certainly done that here, with an eerie tale of deception, murder and the tight family ties that bind us.

This is the first Tana French book I've read but it isn't for me. I couldn't engage with Toby as a character and it was slow in pace. Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin/Viking for the opportunity to read and review it.

I enjoyed this book. The writing is recognisable as Tana French, it is very much in her style. A self deprecating hero writing in the first person, explaining his always very reasonable feelings as the story progresses. I felt that some of the angles: for example - the period in hospital and the long period in Hugo's house, were rather drawn out as the self explanatory behaviour continues.
I also felt that the reader is aware that there must be some connection with the discovery of a body and the attack in the early part of the book - but it took a long time to join the dots!
However, I did enjoy it and recommend it to Tana French fans

I loved this novel beyond words and beyond measure. I laughed at many points, then I cried at some points too. Then, at 90%, I started getting sad that it would soon be ending.

Where to begin describing what was so good about it? The characters, first and foremost, they all felt unique and real. Like actual flesh-and-blood complex evolving people - full of contradictions, weaknesses, passions and inner conflicts. I loved them all: Toby, Su and Leon, Hugo. The aunts and uncles. Stu and Dec. Melissa.

The way the story unfolded as well - it was never predicable or boring. It was carefully laid out, with every sentence and plot turn given meticulous attention by the author in order to keep us on absorbed, curious, and hungry for more. On the whole, I very much enjoyed this book and will be recommending it to everyone I know.

Thank you to the author for having written this beautifully-crafted novel and congratulations to the publisher for having landed what honestly feels like a masterpiece! I'd give this 20 stars if I could.

Toby our narrater seems to have a charmed life. Until one night he is brutally assaulted in his home. Upon recovery he is still having the after affects of a serious brain injury. He goes to stay with his Uncle Hugo at the Ivy House a place he and his 2 cousins used to hang out. The discovery of a skull in the Wych Elm starts a chain of events which will have Toby questioning if he had seen the past in the same way as his cousins. Rafferty one of the attending detectives seems to be able to see into his soul. Could he have actually had anything to do with this body? The tension is only ramped up more when his Uncle Hugo is taken in for questioning. You need to follow Toby with his mission to see the truth, no matter the consequences .
I was given an ARC of this book by Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

After suffering a brain injury during a burglary at his apartment, Toby goes to live with his uncle Hugo who is himself terminally ill.. When a skull is found in a hollow tree on Hugo's property, the police think that Toby might be a suspect. Given his brain injury however, he can't be sure he's responsible or not...

This is a novel where it does pay to wait to see what happens but it's too long a wait and I did feel that I was waiting for something to happen. The skull is found quite late on and from that point, things get interesting but until then it's very slow. I often find books where someone has a brain injury hard to believe at times, but this one was a bit more of a stretch if I'm honest. It was hard to like Toby and even though I enjoy reading about chaarcters I don't like, Toby took things too far for me

Dublin comes across loud and clear though and it was fun to go from one place to the other with the characters.

I have read other books by Tana and have enjoyed them and this was no different. A good thriller with some unforeseen twists. It does take a little while to 'get going' but enjoy the ride as its worth it once you get there.

I actually didn't love a Tana French book... the world is broken. I just knew I jinxed it by writing that first paragraph in my review of The Secret Place.

I keep trying to convince myself to bump this up a star because it's hard to believe Tana French can write anything that isn't amazing. It's definitely not a bad book, but The Witch Elm - French's first standalone outside of her Dublin Murder Squad series - just didn't contain a lot of the stuff I've loved from this author.

To start with, I feel like my love for French is centred around her awesome, snarky, flawed, messy, human detectives. The crimes are whatever; the detectives - their voices, quirks, passions and personal histories - are what make her books so damn addictive. I shipped Rob and Cassie so hard in In the Woods, and Cassie herself made the implausible plot of The Likeness actually okay. I will probably never get over Frank and Rosie from Faithful Place. And that's before we've got to Kennedy, Moran and the ferocious Antoinette Conway.

Toby? He just doesn't compare. He's an asshole, but it's not that because sometimes assholes can be interesting (I might want to rewrite that sentence later). It's more that he's obnoxiously clueless, a self-proclaimed "lucky bastard" wrapped in a bubble of his own privilege. He's tall, blond and handsome, works at a PR firm, has a loving girlfriend and a group of good friends, and pretty much gets away with everything. He's a person who thinks this about poor, homeless people:

They could have gone to school. Instead of spending their time sniffing glue and breaking the wing mirrors off cars. They could have got jobs. The recession's over; there's no reason for anyone to be stuck in the muck unless they actually choose to be.


Flaws are interesting, but Toby's casual misogyny, judgement of others, and condescension make him extremely irritating. Plus, French's narrators are typically smart and intuitive, so Toby's head-scratching was frustrating.

I think I can trace a lot of my issues back to Toby. For example, I usually enjoy the long-winded nature of Tana French's books. She can get away with waffling on because I genuinely enjoy learning details about the characters, and listening to them have pages of dialogue about something unrelated to the plot. But I was so uninterested in Toby that huge chunks of this book made me want to go to sleep.

It takes so long to get to the main mystery, too. I get the point of the lengthy build-up in order to understand Toby as a character - someone who has been handed everything in life without having to face the struggles others would have, and someone who cannot believe it when he meets his first misfortune - but that didn't make it any more enjoyable to get through. It's a good hundred pages before the main story even rears its head.

I also can't deny that I miss the exciting investigations and police procedure the detectives usually take us through.

But I don't want this to get too negative. French does a lot of excellent things in this book and she digs into something interesting with Toby: how someone's luck, privilege, whatever-you-want-to-call-it can really affect not just a person's physical circumstances but their entire outlook on life. He's a conceptually fascinating individual, but it was so hard to find sympathy for him. It was this, in the end, that made me unable to care who the murderer was.

A beautifully written, atmospheric and engaging book which reminded me very much of The Secret History. Tana French is an expert at capturing South Co Dublin and a privileged generation whose lives are not as charmed as they might first appear

This is another outstanding book from Tana French. I think her Dublin Murder Squad series has been excellent and this stand-alone book is just as good. It’s a psychological thriller which of itself would have put me off rather; dd to this a description including a damaged, unreliable narrator and dark family secrets coming to light and frankly, if it had been by almost anyone else I wouldn’t have bothered. However, French takes these well-worn tropes and makes something rich and rewarding from them.

The plot revolves around the narrator, Toby, a good looking, intelligent young man from a comfortable, supportive family whose life so far has been an easy cruise, smoothed by circumstance and easy charm. However, at the very start of the book he suffers a head trauma which changes everything. This is followed by a grisly discovery in the garden of a family house; the police investigate and slowly a past of which Toby has been blissfully unaware begins to emerge.

This is a long book at over 500 pages and events unfold slowly, but it never dragged at all for me. French is brilliant at creating wholly believable characters and situations and her portrait of someone trying to come to terms with genuine struggle for the first time in his life is exceptionally good. Anyone who has had to watch someone they love go through a terminal illness will recognise that this, too, is superbly and sensitively done...and so on. And throughout all this runs an increasingly tense plot as Toby tries to piece events together. French writes lovely, unfussy but very evocative prose, and her ear for dialogue is superb, I think. I found it compulsively readable and utterly engrossing throughout.

In short, this is a very fine novel with crime as its driver but which is much, much more than just a thriller and is in a wholly different league from the usual “Gripping Psychological Thrillers.” It’s definitely one of my books of the year and very, very warmly recommended.

(My thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou! Netgalley and publishers I can’t tell u how I felt when I got the email to say I was being given the opportunity to read this stand alone tana French,one of my fave authors .
Right now down to business
Ok having read a lot of reviews this appears to be a marmite novel for tana ,u either love it or hate it. I was glad I read the reviews as this helped me a lot to go in more with an open mind as opposed to expecting it to be still a thriller at the fore
This is a novel about Toby ,his life ,his place in his world and his inability to see sometimes others and their struggles.
I like a slow burn so didn’t mind that it takes its time ,it is maybe a little bit too long but not by much and I like a novel that builds on characters their pasts and there present .
I cd picture ivy house ,I loved Hugo ,I found the cousins intriguing and cd have easily read a novel on them two alone ,what lies beneath that wife and mother juggling family life ,well I suspect a whole lot!
Toby interested me ,at times I thought oooh interesting here we see someone vulnerable yet we also have times where his character is quite unlikable ,his joking about his best mate went a bit too far in my option where banter cd become more on the side of bullying
His clear sepeertaion from his cousins as he can’t relate to people who have had struggles ,he has seen life as easy and is ignorant to the pain of others ,in fact he doesn’t think at sometimes bar his own amusement
I liked tana doing this ,it’s brave ,to have a character that’s not all good or all bad ,yes we do read but for me he was a little more on the cusp of sheer shallowness ,his past in the main and his inability to truly feel things or see them for what they are .
There are comsequnces
Then ending was great ,again felt wonderfully happy tana took that route ,angle on mental health yes but a part of me also thought he may have acted like that for other reasons,to see what it felt like ,to have that feeling others did when they did something similar .
I do get others frustrations but if u see it as fiction with mystery around it as opposed to a page turning thriller u won’t be disappointed .
I will always buy this author ,I’ve read every single one and though I prefer Dublin murder squad due to personal choice as I love a who done it page turner and her complex laying thisndoesnt mean this novel is written any less better .
It gets four for me because of the diffirent elements to Toby ,and not making him a totally sympathetic character ,and the ending ,the action Toby does usually that wd be at the beginning or middle and u just think woooh wat u gonna do now
Tana works it all out
Roll on the next one where I be praying I will be able to get another opportunity early on to read it as I find waiting very hard

I haven't read any Tana French books, but hear so much good stuff about them that I was quite eager to get into this one.

I must say that I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

We meet Toby, who is a bit of a 'meh' guy. He trundles along all happy and arrogant, and I don't know whether we are meant to like him or not, but there is something off about him. He's OK. I just think that if I knew him in real life, I would think he was really annoying.

Toby has to go back to a relative's home where he spent some time as a child growing up and one day his second cousin finds a body - well whats left of one - in the trunk of an old tree. We then explore what happened, and I think I started to like Toby less from here - when we get to really know him.

This one is a slow burner, but it is worth the wait. As I said, I haven't read any Tana French books before, so I don't know if this is her writing style, but it was very good. I would recommend this one to any thriller fans. Although I may not describe this as a thriller, I'm not sure what I'd call it. Perhaps a disturbing subtle horror?! But in a good way! :)

In any case, worth a read, and I'm glad I got the chance to read it.

The Wych Elm was entirely mesmerising, a standalone novel from Tana French with her acute eye for nuanced character and her beautiful use of language, telling an utterly compelling and genuinely immersive tale that will leave you melancholy.

Toby has never worried about anything, a happy go lucky guy, sure of his place in the world, sure of those around him and casually reliant on his ability to get himself out of hot water should he fall in. Then a vicious attack and a dying stalwart of his childhood changes everything…

The Wych Elm is a slow burning literary delight of a novel. Tana French explores themes of memory, identity and how we view ourselves compared to how others view us – and how we are changed by circumstance and event. The Ivy House, very much a character in its own right sets the scene as a horrifying discovery leaves Toby questioning all his memories of an idyllic childhood spent in the company of his cousins…and how well he really knows them at their heart.

The author weaves an intricate web of time, place and person- through Toby’s experiences, his recovery, his slow understanding of what is going on around him, she makes you feel every moment and it is haunting, fascinating reading.

This is not a novel for anyone who wants an easy pay off or a fast paced resolution- this is one where character is everything, you commit to these people, learn from them and about them, all through the dark glass of Toby’s skewed viewpoint. It pulls you along with it, revealing truths at its own pace, offering a family group dynamic that is subtle and authentic.

I lived it every step of the way. It is a long book that speeds past as if it were the blink of an eye, powerful and layered, intelligently designed and in it’s denouement incredibly sad.

The Wych Elm will stay with me as Tana French novels always do, that is her writing superpower. I’ll never forget Toby, Leon, Su and the rest and it’s one of those books that I’ll definitely revisit, unravelling missed moments and revelling in the poetic prose and immersive settings.

Loved it

Highly Recommended.

’The thing is, I suppose,’ he said, ‘that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what might be underneath.’

The wonderful Tana French has always been at the literary end of the crime fiction spectrum but in this book perhaps she’s crossed the line more completely into literary fiction whose plot happens to involve various crimes. I say this because if you come looking for merely a thriller or police procedural you may well complain about the slowness of the narrative, the detailed attention to Toby’s interiority, the diversionary progression: you may need to re-set your expectations to psychological character study rather than fast-paced page-turner.

In lots of ways, this reminded me of French’s second book 'The Likeness': issues around identity link the two, as well as an atmospheric evocation of the lives of a group of people built around their temporary inhabitation of a house. This, I would say, is a more sophisticated treatment of those tropes, even as they’re doubled between Toby/Melissa/Hugo in the present and Toby/Susanna/Leon in the recalled past.

These are not the only crime fiction motifs that French utilises: the unreliable narrator, memory loss as instrument of suspense have become so over-used and formulaic that they are practically clichés of the genre these days – in French’s masterful hands they become potent again, treated with depth and psychological verisimilitude. And together they feed back into what may be the central mystery under investigation: who is Toby? Not in a cheap ‘disguised identity’ way but in a probing and interrogative mode: is personality and identity a coherent core ‘thing’ or are people made up of shifting layers of needs and actions that cohere only in the most fitful and arbitrary of ways? What happens when someone’s self-identification as a ‘lucky’ person proves itself disastrously untrue? When layers of ‘this is me-ness’ are stripped away and shown to be superficial, even false?

With depth, acute characterisation and significant insight into processes of healing and deterioration, as much as I love French’s Dublin Squad series, this is an exciting departure for her writing.

Tana French is easily one of my favorite authors. I love love love the Dublin Murder Squad series and I always rave about them to my friends and family.

So when I saw that her new book The Wych Elm was coming out and it was a stand alone, my interest was piqued.

Toby is a character that starts off as likable, but a bit of a tosser. The deeper you get into the book, the more you start to realize that Toby actually is not that nice of a person. Toby has actually done a few shitty things and at one point, he gets almost beaten to death for it.
After the attack, Toby moves in with his sick uncle in The Ivy House, a place where he spend a lot of time growing up as a child. At one point, the remains of a human are found in one of the trees on the land and the police gets called in.
Toby wants to try to find out what happened and what follows is a very tense tale of family, growing up and revenge.

I could not put this book down, The characters are so well written, they just jump off the page. The story is thrilling and really exciting to read. Tana French has delivered once again, a superb novel.