In the Woods

⚖The case for it

A game of hide-and-seek leaves one boy hugging a tree, his shoes bloodied, every memory of that afternoon burned clean away. He grows up into the detective narrating this novel, and now a girl turns up dead beside the same stand of oak he cannot remember. Yes, French takes her sweetness with the plot, letting atmosphere pool where a leaner writer would push. Trust her instead. What the detective refuses to know, and how long he can keep refusing, drives you harder than any question of guilt.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

French can write, no question, but she smothers a taut mystery under literary throat-clearing and mood. Rob Ryan narrates six hundred pages of self-sabotage so willful you can see each disaster coming a chapter early, and the present-day case resolves on a confession that arrives more or less because the book needs it to.

— the honest librarian