The Blogging of a Book Addict

I like to start reviews with a brief explanation of why I actually read the book in question, so: I read this because I read the first book in the series, In The Woods, for college (yes, really), and I loved that one, although the ending frustrated the hell out of me. This book did not frustrate me, and that makes me very very happy indeed.

As I was reading In The Woods, I kept thinking to myself that Cassie was a brilliant character, so I was pretty excited to find out that she was the narrator of The Likeness. That said, she surprised me a bit as a narrator, and, in a lot of ways, was nothing like what I was expecting (I can't define this in any detail, but you'll see what I mean if you read this novel after meeting Cassie in In The Woods.)

A friend of mine asked me if I thought this was on par with or better than In the Woods, so I want to include the same answer I gave her: I really can't decide. In a lot of ways this was better: the ending was less frustrating, I knew exactly what happened and why and got all of my pressing questions answered, and the characters didn't do massively stupid things that made me want to bang my head against a wall. Still, there were a lot of aspects of In the Woods that I preferred: the camaraderie among the characters, the straightforward (well, sort of) murder case, and the fast-moving plot. In fact, my biggest complaint about The Likeness is probably that the plot moved so slow it felt almost as thought nothing at all happened for the first 300 or so pages, and then it plummeted into super fast action towards the end. While I don't mind this on the whole, it did make the beginning of the book feel extraordinarily boring, and, if this had been the first book in the series, I don't think I would have been nearly as pulled in and instantly hooked as I was with In the Woods.

All in all, this is an excellent book and an excellent series, and if you're a fan of murder mystery/suspense type things I definitely recommend you give this a shot. French is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, and I don't think you'll be disappointed.