Uncovered Book Club discussion

For the month of August, Raeleen and I have decided to pick the same book to read together. And it's Tana French's mystery, detective novel In the Woods

We are really excited to all be reading & discussing the same book throughout August! And we hope to have a liveshow discussion over on one of our channels after the month is over.

We hope you will join us to read and discuss In the Woods throughout the month of August! Just be sure to warn if you are going to post spoilers in any of your comments below. Thanks!

yes! this book has been on my shelf for years!

I've been meaning to read this book for awhile now!

The summary seems really interesting.. I'll definitely read it.

Super excited to read this book but i think you linked the wrong book.

Victoria wrote: "Super excited to read this book but i think you linked the wrong book."

Oops! Thanks for noticing.

Read it a couple of months ago, excellent.

This book is so good! The whole series is so good! I was lucky enough to get in on French right from the beginning. I don't know if I'll reread it with everyone, but I'll definitely be popping in to see what everyone thinks!

accidentally bought the second book years ago thinking it was a stand alone, so now i finally have a real excuse to go out and buy the first! thanks guys

Great, looking forward to it!

Yay! I've been waiting for the right time to read it and this will be it! :)

Looking forward to it!

Read it this month and didn't apreciate it much. I think i rated it 2 stars but i can be wrong.

I've been needing a reason to read this, hopefully I have time!

Yes,I'm in!Looking forward to it!

this has been on my list for the longest just ordered a copy online so I can read along. great pick

I wanted to read this while I was in the hospital, but husband could not find it. I bought a new copy to read it with a group, then just last month found my original copy. Passed other copy to my daughter, who loved it.

Since it's Man Booker season, I decided to get a head start and now I'm halfway through the book.

So far I am liking it. The characters are great and fully fleshed out and French is good at building suspense. I also like the fact that the murder is almost secondary - this is a book about our subconscious and how it can take over the mind when certain events trigger lost memories.

I dived in two days ago and have been enjoy it so far. Have to admit that I am not big on crime novels, but as one reader pointed already, it does not seem to be all about suspense and crime itself. Characters are plastic, I can feel them and the social commentary on politics and history is interesting and appropriate. Lastly, writing style and sentence structure is suprisingly complex, literary and artistic references I encoutered so far (pointlism, quixotesque) were unexpected but pleasing and fitting because of the main character's education and image he tried to impress on people around him.

I'm hoping my library copy comes in soon! I'm glad to see people are enjoying it so far. I haven't really read many character-driven mystery novels (besides, arguably, the Galbraith series), so I'm looking forward to reading and discussing with everyone!

This is fully engrossing with well-defined characters and is eerie enough to be keeping me on the edge of my seat. It probably doesn't help to be reading this late at night. Can't put it down so far!

I've read some Tana French, but never her debut novel. I am now about a 100 pages in and loving it so far. Fast paced, interesting characters and intriguing plot; just what you would want from a crime novel.

100 pages left! so good! French is so clever

Finished the book: Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Thanks Uncovered! After nine years, I finally managed to read this novel.

I've finished yesterday & loved it! Well-written, good story, interesting characters. For those who've read it: what do you think happened in the woods 20 years ago?

I'm really bad at speculation but I have a couple of theories based on the evidence given, considering that we do have an unreliable narrator (that's no spoiler as it is stated in the beginning) .

I'm wondering if the next part of the series, which features Cassie, focuses on that.

Robert wrote: "I'm really bad at speculation but I have a couple of theories based on the evidence given, considering that we do have an unreliable narrator (that's no spoiler as it is stated in the beginning) . ..."

I am not sure Rob's past will feature in the 2nd book, from what I've read, I don't think so. I guess we will have to figure it out ourselves...

Awh, I should not have read the comments, now I know I will not find out for sure and I am DYING to find out...rats!

Tana French is my favorite! I'll be listening to the audio book this month since I've read this book three times in the past 7 or 8 years.

Britta wrote: "Robert wrote: "I'm really bad at speculation but I have a couple of theories based on the evidence given, considering that we do have an unreliable narrator (that's no spoiler as it is stated in th..."

Tana takes one character from a previous book and makes them the main character in the next one. She moves on basically. But the next one (The Likeness) is the best one in my opinion.

Carol wrote: "Britta wrote: "Robert wrote: "I'm really bad at speculation but I have a couple of theories based on the evidence given, considering that we do have an unreliable narrator (that's no spoiler as it ..."

Thanx!

I liked the character in In the Woods & was happy to see her as the focus character in The Likeness.

Ok I swear I'm going to read this book, but the library is taking FOREVER to get it to me. Ugh. I might have to just splurge and go buy it since everyone seems to love it anyway.

I hope you're all having a good reading month so far and enjoying the book club pick!

Just finished. It was okay. I really loved the characters and the mystery 's setup. Unfortunately, the ending was not fulfilling. Glad to see so many ppl enjoying the book. I will say it has been awhile since I read a mystery and this book really reminded why I love mysteries.

I'm halfway through now and I am struggling to pick it back up. I love the atmosphere and descriptions but I feel they may be getting in the way of the story a little. Will see how the second half goes, hopefully the action and pace will pick up slightly and keep me gripped.

No spoilers in this comment. Just general thoughts thus far :)

I'm 80% done now and I wish I wasn't so tired because then I'd finish it tonight! It's gotten really good since the halfway mark.

For people who haven't started yet, it took me about 30% for me to get invested because there is so much to learn in the beginning. But once you've met all the main characters and understand the broader context, it's so gripping.

I can't wait to see how it all wraps up.

Yeah I just wanted to rush through the last 200 pages or so cause I was so excited to see how everything would turn out.

To date The Uncovered Book Club hasn't let me down - well done!

Robert wrote: "Yeah I just wanted to rush through the last 200 pages or so cause I was so excited to see how everything would turn out.

To date The Uncovered Book Club hasn't let me down - well done!"

I'm so glad! Hopefully we will continue to have some great conversations around these books. It's been fun so far.

I really enjoyed this book as did my daughter when we read it a few months ago. I felt as if the pacing matched how a real investigation would go, hours, days, weeks of routine, then haring off one way or another after a lead or suspect & getting ramped up just to find one's self back at the beginning...an eternity of routine broken up by a few moments of excitement & possible terror. Of course, having an investigator who has issues just makes things cloudier...and more unreliable. I thought Tana French had a bang-up debut.

I finished it yesterday, and I really liked it. I gave it 4 stars. When I was a teenager I read a lot of crime novels, and lately I've gotten a little bit bored with the genre. But I think this one stands out, because it's not just about the plot or the mystery, but it's also very much about Rob and how he deals with his past, and his relationship with Cassie.

I also think the writing style stands out. Tana French can create an atmosphere very well, like the enless-summer-holiday feeling you get when you read about the kids playing in the woods in 1984, contrasted to the autumn dreariness of the time of the investigation.

Well said, Naomi.

Yes, Naomi, you summed up my feelings perfectly.

I managed to finish last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. I can't wait to discuss it with you all more as everyone finishes up.

SPOILERS BELOW:
(view spoiler)[How does everyone feel about not knowing, in the end, what happened to Rob's friends all those years ago? I kind of liked how French ended it. She has a really good explanation of it on her GR profile. I'll paste it below:

The thing about In the Woods is that Rob Ryan is - possibly because of whatever happened when he was twelve, possibly just because of who he is - the kind of person who's incapable of taking any irrevocable leap. Whenever he gets close to anything that's irrevocable, he runs as far and as fast as he can - he does it in his relationship with Cassie, for example. So when he gets to the verge of remembering what happened, that's what he does: he runs.

So when it came to the ending of In the Woods, I had three choices:

1 - Turn the narrator into a totally different character at the end of the book, for the sake of a neat plot resolution: shoddy and dishonest.

2 - Have some other character do a deus ex machina and find out for him: forced and cheap.

3 - Complete the arc of his psychological journey (which for me was the core plot arc of the book) and the arc of the modern-day mystery, but leave the old one unsolved.

I went with the third one - because that was the one that was true to the character and the rest of the book, and because I always saw In the Woods as a book about Rob and what that old mystery resurfacing does to him, rather than a book about the mystery itself. I knew some readers would be furious that it didn't stick to the conventions of the mystery genre, and I could see why - but on the other hand, I also knew some readers would be furious if I sold out my narrator in the last chapter for easy closure. I figured all I could do was write the best book I was capable of writing, and hope it was good enough.

This is a long-winded way of saying that, at the moment, I can't see any way I'd be able to resolve that mystery - again, the answer is in Rob's head, and his nature means that he'll never have the courage to take that leap and find it. But I haven't ruled out the possibility that I'll find a way to clear it up, somewhere down the line.
(hide spoiler)]

Just finished the book! I enjoyed this read very much, the story really took me by surprise near the end. thanks for such a great pick this month

Hi everyone! If you missed the liveshow discussion that Raeleen and I had earlier today, you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dibdO...

Just be warned, we talk about spoilers. So make sure you're finished with the book first :)