In The Woods by Tana French

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

This was the first novel I read this year. I bought this bad boy in the Boston-Logan International Airport on my way back to Spokane, from spending Christmas in New Hampshire with my husbands family. Our flight had a layover in Dallas, so the flight times were roughly chopped into two 5 hour chunks. I figured I needed something to do because I definitely wasn't going to be sleeping on the flight, so I went to the nearest newsstand and grabbed this book.

I've read great things about this book and was pretty excited to see how well I would receive it. This was probably my first book in a long while that actually ventures into read fiction rather than just young adult novel. 

The story was interesting enough; a boy who is found bloody and catatonic in the forest, and doesn't remember what happens to him!? COOL. Years later he's a detective and is working on a case that may help him remember!? EVEN BETTER!

I was intrigued, but found it hard to power through this book. Maybe it's just because I'm still stuck in my adolescent mindset where things have to stay interesting and fresh for me to keep reading, but I felt with this book the writing got super boring and dragged on in a good few parts. Of course, I knew it was only going to get better once the events started to get more intense and they got closer to figuring out what was going on, and plus! I wanted to know what happened to him in the forest when he was a kid! It was pretty painful at times, but I believe that comes with the territory of such a book.

As a mystery novel, it's interesting enough keeping you on your toes and constantly guessing as to who it was, what went down and how did it all happen. I believe the story was well constructed and the characters were personable. I found it somewhat surprising that the main character, Rob Ryan, was pretty bland in the fact that he wasn't the one who made it interesting. It was always his interactions with those around him that made him interesting. On his own, I felt like I was trying to root for him and asking why he wasn't acting this way or that being as he was in such a traumatizing situation as a child AND working on a case related to it.

I was SUPER disappointed in the ending. SO. FREAKING. MAD. 

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

I'm going to say this because by the time I ended reading this, I felt jipped! I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT. You don't at all, figure out what happened to him as a kid....WHATSOEVER. You learn the ending to the case of the 12-year-old girl, but to his own childhood event that brought me to this book to begin with and somewhat totally DRIVES this story....YOU DON"T GET TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT. AKHBSFPOUHE(VUINOQEWNJVHODBI.

Super pissed.

Besides from that, you definitely get a good read and a good story out of it all.

Just be prepared!

I'd give this book a 3.5/5 (like anything is really going to be a 5??? HAH). It was a little too disappointing for me, but I still feel like if you can get past that, then you'll be able to see how truly good this story is!