Today we’re looking forward to starting the next book in The Bestseller Code 100 challenge, In The Woods by Tana French for Book Beginnings on Fridays.
Book Beginnings is a fun meme hosted by Rose City Reader blog. To participate, share the first sentence or so of a novel you are reading and your thoughts about it. When you are finished, add your URL to the Book Beginnings page linked above. Hope to see you there!
In The Woods* by Tana French
Reprint cover:
My paperback copy has this cover:
(*Amazon Affiliate link)
Which cover do you like better?
Summary: Twenty years before, three young children disappear into the woods that surround their Dublin neighborhood. Only one survives, and he can’t say what happened. Now he’s a police detective faced with investigating the murder of a young girl in the same woods.
This award-winning novel is the first in a series of six featuring the Dublin Murder Squad.
First sentence of Prologue:
Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland’s subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur’s palate, watercolor nuances within a pinch-sized range of cloud and soft rain; this is summer full-throated and extravagant in hot pure silkscreen blue.
First sentence of Chapter 1:
What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass.
I am so looking forward to reading this book. The first person narrator in Chapter 1 is intense. I’m also intrigued that it is set in Ireland.
Have you read In the Woods? Any of the others in the series by Tana French? What do you think?
I have had this book since 2014! I desperately wanted to start reading this series…and the number of pages in this first one shouldn’t have been enough to keep me away from it. But somehow I kept choosing books with 300-500 pages over this one.
I do plan to read it…someday!
Thanks for sharing, and reminding me of why I bought it.
Thanks for visiting my blog.
Isn’t it funny how some books sit on the shelf. I didn’t read Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle for years, even though I had a copy. When I did read it, I really enjoyed it.
I guess one good thing about the reading challenge is I am reading some of those books I might not get around to.
I’ve had a copy of this book even longer than Laurel-Rain has. I desperately want to read it…and then go on with the rest of the series. Hope you enjoy it!
I am enjoying it so far. The bickering/bantering relationship between the two detectives is well done.
I really enjoyed this one! I learned about it from one of the participants in British Isles Friday on my blog.
Yay, I’m glad to hear you read it.
Like Catherine, I have had this book on my shelf, along with a couple of others in the series, since the year dot and certainly since before I owned a Kindle!
I wasn’t too sure about the rather bland suite of cover art which accompanies this series over at Goodreads, but after checking out the alternative, original suite (which must be those I have, although I can’t lay my hands on them to check), over at ‘Fantastic Fiction’, I definitely prefer the modern option. I think I prefer the first option you feature though, as the alternative is rather spooky looking, don’t you think?
I might never get around to reading this book at this rate, but it does sound good and I hope that you enjoy it 🙂
Yvonne
Okay, now I’m curious why no one is reading it. Did you see some bad reviews?
This book has gone on and off my TBR list over the years, I will look forward to your review to determine if I should put it back on. I think the second cover is creepier.