My rating: 5/5
Six months after the events of In the Woods, an urgent telephone call beckons detective Cassie Maddox to a grisly crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used. Suddenly, Cassie must discover not only who killed this girl, but, more importantly, who she is. A disturbing tale of shifting identities, The Likeness firmly establishes Tana French as an important voice in suspense fiction. (www.goodreads.com)
My thoughts
What a brilliant read. I loved it.
This was my first book by Tana French and although initially I thought it was slow going, it (thankfully!) dawned on me very quickly that this isn't a "fast-food-read" which we get bombarded with from everywhere. It's well and truly over 400 pages, but each page worth the while.
A woman with the name Lexie Madison is found dead - it's the same fake identity Cassie Maddox used in an undercover case years earlier, but not only that, the dead woman looks exactly like Cassie as well.
So Cassie becomes Lexie once again and goes undercover and moves in with Lexie's four friends Daniel, Abby, Justin, and Rafe.
I loved the group, graduate students, who couldn't be any more different from each other, living together in an old house in the country, trying hard to escape the hectic daily life of the big city and the boundaries of society. Even Cassie finds herself getting attached to their life, to a point where her loyalties to her job and the police are tested. But, of course, their perfect life isn't perfect at all and soon cracks appear.
Tana French's writing style is beautiful with details and descriptions near perfect. I felt drawn into the story so much, I felt somewhat lost after I finished the book.
