The Likeness

“There's a Spanish proverb,” he said, “that's always fascinated me. “Take what you want and pay for it, says God.” “I don't believe in God,” Daniel said, “but that principle seems, to me, to have a divinity of its own; a kind of blazing purity. What could be simpler, or more crucial? You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and that you will have to pay it.”I've been following this series on audio. The narrator for “The Likeness” was excellent, just as the one for the first book. I'm sure this added a lot to my enjoyment, but there's still something very special about Tana French's writing that pulls me in.

I love her characters. I wasn't invested in the story because of the mystery itself, but because of the characters. I loved Cassie Maddox and Frank. I loved even Daniel. I enjoyed being inside their minds, hearing their interactions, their “rants”. And the rest of the ensemble complemented them perfectly. At times I would catch myself drifting into the story as if they were all real.

The book was not quite perfect, plot-wise I wasn't completely sold on the doppelgänger angle, but it worked well enough for the story and, like I said, the characters are truly well done.

I am so happy to be finally reading the rest of this series. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this second in the series didn't reach the heights of [b:In the Woods 237209 In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1) Tana French https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1348442606s/237209.jpg 3088141] for me personally, but I still found it incredibly enjoyable to read and cannot wait to get into the rest of the series. The biggest reason this book was never going to be 5 stars for me is that, quite simply, its whole set up is preposterous. The situation is that Detective Cassie Maddox gets sent on a undercover mission after a murder victim turns up who looks exactly like her. Yeah... It's completely unbelievable and doesn't get any easier to believe by the end of the book. Every time another implausible and ridiculous event and/or coincidence took place, I couldn't quite suspend enough disbelief to stay absorbed in the story. Was it still fun? Well, yes, but I also think it affected the quality and impact of the novel as a whole.I also really missed Rob and Cassie as a pairing. Their friendship was a large part of why In The Woods was so great and even though there are some interesting characters and relationships in The Likeness, none of them came close to Rob and Cassie. I was very much excited when I found out Cassie was the narrator for this book, but that was also a bit of a let down, because she seems very different from what I remember of her character in In the Woods. I accept that past events have changed her, but I don't understand how she became this. In The Likeness she makes so many stupid and unprofessional decisions, and often comes across as a bit of a hypocrite. This is definitely at odds with what I remember of her character in the previous novel.If you didn't like the ending of In the Woods (I didn't mind it personally...), you'll probably be a whole lot more satisfied with the ending here. Things are tied up and explained much better, in fact the only thing that was left unexplained was how Cassie and Lexie/Gracie looked completely identical. Am I supposed to believe this was a complete coincidence? I was waiting for some reason to be given, no matter how ridiculous. Maybe cloning or something, I don't know.So overall, I had my issues with this second edition of the series, but at the end of day none of that matters. I still enjoyed it immensely and I was also kind of expecting it, as having read many of my friends' reviews, each book in the series seems really divisive even among Tana French fans. For example it seems that for readers who love this one, didn't like others in the series, but readers who didn't like this one, like the ones that fans of The Likeness hate. It's quite amusing really, that no one can agree on their most/least favourites, but it also makes me confident there will be others in the series that I love as much as In The Woods. I can't wait to keep reading.

So much better than the first one. The main character in this book got on my nerves, too, but managed to redeem herself to me just before I gave up on her.