Let’s take a look at The Likeness 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!
The Likeness by Tana French
(*Amazon Affiliate link)
Summary: In this follow-up to In The Woods, Detective Cassie Maddox is no longer with the Dublin Murder squad. When a young woman whose name is Alexandra Madison is killed, however, the squad calls her in. They realize that the victim looks like Cassie and Alexandra Madison is one of Cassie’s past undercover aliases. While she searches for the killer, Cassie must figure out whether she was the intended target.
First Sentence of The Likeness Prologue:
Some nights, if I’m sleeping on my own, I still dream about Whitethorn House. In the dream it’s always spring, cool fine light with a late afternoon haze. I climb the worn stone steps and knock on the door — that great, brass knocker, going black with age and heavy enough to startle you every time — and an old woman with an apron and a deft, uncompromising face lets me in.
First Sentence Chapter 1:
This is Lexie Madison’s story, not mine.
Discussion:
I read Tana French’s In The Woods for a reading challenge (review) and enjoyed the elegant writing, so I’m eager to delve into this one. It feels like one of those books that deserves to be read at leisure over a long, quiet weekend. Not that I’ll get one of those.
One thing I am struggling with is that I have a good friend named Cassie. I keep visualizing her when I read the name of the character in the book and they aren’t much alike. Have you ever read a book with the name of a close friend, family member, or even your own name? Was it difficult?
What do you think?
