The Likeness: Dublin Murder Squad: 2

What I liked about this 1. The rambling conversations here are so accurate . This is exactly how I talk to my friends. 2. The story is quite gripping and very readable. A page turner. I breezed through this book quicker than some with half the length. 3. Frank. Such a great character. Might read the book where he is front and center. What I did not like about this book 1. Cassie Maddox is not a mentally fit to be on any police force. 2. Cassie Maddox and everyone around her overrates her skills. 3. Like book one, most of the smug criminals got away again. Cassie was practically begging for their forgiveness in the end. 4. Logical me just couldn't root for her. 5. Basically no Rob Ryan. I thought I wouldn't miss him but with stupid Cassie narrating, I did. 6. The doppelganger story was just so difficult to swallow. It reduced plenty of the grit and realism established in book one. 7. Cassie is just not lead character material. This novel destroyed her for me. I just loved her in book one. AFTER SLEEPING: I think I enjoyed this one. I realize duh that some characters can really frustrate me. They are meant to do that. Adjusting from 3 to 5 stars! Audiobook narration: Fair Also read the ebook. Verdict: Enjoyed and Recommended. Will continue on this series. Maybe next year.

Die Ausgangslage der Geschichte ist haarsträubend, aber die Autorin verpackt das Ganze so meisterhaft, dass es mich nicht störte. Die Erzählung begann für meinen Geschmack etwas langsam, hat mich aber dann doch völlig in ihren Bann gezogen. Tana French beherrscht es unglaublich gut, Atmosphäre zu erzeugen. Ich hatte das Gefühl, gemeinsam mit der Protagonistin in dem großen Haus zu wohnen und sie bei ihren nächtlichen Spaziergängen zu begleiten. Ich fühlte mich mich mit ihr gemeinsam verfolgt, zweifelte, hatte Angst, war traurig, spürte die Geborgenheit und das Adrenalin. Ein sehr befriedigendes Leseerlebnis.

Yep, Tana French has succeeded in doing it yet again - writing a fantastic book which kept me on the edge of my seat from the very first to the very last page. After finishing a book, I usually juxtapose four important elements before deciding on a specific rating: The characterization, the plot, the writing and the atmosphere. Almost never do I feel like all four of those elements have been realized to perfection by the author (as much as I hate to consider something as 'perfect'), but The Likeness is one of those books. I have nothing to criticize here at all. If you know my reviews, you know that this happens almost never, so consider this review to be a huge recommendation for Tana French's amazing mystery series. → The Plot Set after In the Woods, the first book in the Dublin Murder Squad series, this book focuses on detective Cassie Maddox, who was the best friend of Rob Ryan, the narrator of the first book. Told through her first-person point of view, The Likeness opens with the corpse of a woman called Lexie Madison being found who looks exactly like Cassie. Cassie's own past is soon going to be involved as Lexie Madison was an alias Cassie has used in an undercover investigation some years ago. In order to discover who has brutally murdered Lexie Madison, Cassie slips into the role of her doppelganger and takes over her life to find out as much as possible about the four mysterious friends Lexie lived with. At that moment, Cassie knows that she has entered a dangerous game, but she wouldn't think that this game turns out to change her life forever. As unlikely and randomly as this book's premise sounds, it immediately caught my interest and had me engaged until I turned to the last page. Twists and turns appeared around every corner, yet the book remained calm and never rushed, allowed me to sympathize with each and every one of the characters involved. The plot is so complex that it is impossible to read this book en passant - and quite a few readers seemed to criticize the premise, not without reason. How likely is it to find a doppelganger you have never met before and to be able to take over his life without anyone noticing? It is not like this happens all the time. But then, fantasy novels are just as unbelievable because they also play with the reader's imagination. For me, authenticity doesn't emerge out of the likelihood of certain scenarios, but out of the author's ability to make me believe what happened, to make me feel like this could have happened in reality. And Tana French did make me believe. → The Characters We have eight main characters in this book, every one of them interesting and complex in their own right. Cassie Maddox' boyfriend Sam O'Neill who struggles with accepting Cassie's undercover role; her wayward and demanding, yet clever superior Frank Mackey; the killed Lexie who has been fully fleshed out as a character in the course of the novel (something I admire the author for); and Lexie's four friends - Abby, Rafe, Justin and Daniel -, maybe the most important addition to the cast of characters in this novel. Living in an old house full of tradition, those four friends were connected by their pasts and their social strugglings, each of them accompanied by their own secrets. As mysterious as they appear to be in the beginning, Tana French presses every button to develop believable, interesting characters out of all of them, so much that at one point I didn't want this book to end anymore. → The Writing Tana French is an amazing writer, I never doubted that after In the Woods, but with this book, she totally convinced me that her thrillers are no ordinary thrillers. They could, in my opinion, be classified as great literature, considering her talents to approach her characters and introduce and develop them with so much depth. Perhaps the most significant topic this novel deals with is the struggles Cassie endures while slipping into Lexie's life. Where does the Cassie's character end, and where does Lexie's character begin? A question Cassie has to face when she realizes how interesting Lexie's life was in comparison to her own, how easy it is to be Lexie, how endearing her friendships to Abby, Rafe, Justin and Daniel are. But that is not everything this novel is composed of. Prominently referred to is the Irish history, a past which surely could not turn into a motivation for brutality and violence - or could it? Tana French does not back away from exploring themes like loneliness, isolation, obsession, identity struggles and suppression. And all of those themes are interconnected in such an entertaining way that I was fascinated by it with every new page. → The Atmosphere Set in a little village in Ireland, the book introduces us to a rather dark atmosphere, with the mysterious house gaining center stage soon. Tana French seems to like letting her characters wander off into the forest in the darkness of night, even more frequently here than in In the Woods. This book is not as spine-tingling as the first novel in the series, partly because it is rather slow-paced without ever becoming boring, but you can still expect some unsettling and disturbing moments which will leave you questioning the extent of humanity. The book itself is quite long (466 pages according to Goodreads, but my Hardcover edition was 778 pages long). It is true that some parts of it could have been shortened. But sometimes my reading soul is overpowered by guilty pleasure, and that's exactly why I didn't mind the length and didn't even want this novel to end. [b:Faithful Place|7093952|Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)|Tana French|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1291165900s/7093952.jpg|7350661], make an effort. My expectations are high. In the end, I'd like to mention that this book spoils some of the events of In the Woods. While The Likeness could be read on its own, I recommend beginning with the first book to be able to capture the interesting character development and a lot of references made in this novel. A book about transformation, about human failure, about victims turning to perpetrators and culprits becoming victims. As disturbing as parts of it were ... I loved every single moment of it.

Achtung: Kann leichte Spoiler für alle enthalten, die Teil 1, “In the Woods”, dt. “Grabesgrün”, noch nicht gelesen haben! Deutscher Titel: Totengleich Cassie Maddox, die wir bereits in “In the Woods” kennengelernt haben, arbeitet inzwischen in der Abteilung für häusliche Gewalt. Als Sam, der nach wie vor in der Mordkommission arbeitet, ruft sie eines Tages zu einem Tatort – und als Cassie dort eintrifft, wird ihr klar, warum sich Sam so merkwürdig verhalten hat – die Tote gleicht ihr nicht nur aufs Haar, sie hat auch noch die Identität angenommen, unter der Cassie in einem früheren Fall undercover gearbeitet hat… Nachdem “In the Woods” mich so begeistert hat, hatte ich hohe Erwartungen an dieses Buch, und ich bin sehr froh, dass diese nicht enttäuscht wurden! Das ganze Setting dieses zweiten Krimis von Tana French ist so außergewöhnlich, dass man sich ihm kaum entziehen kann. Sprachlich gewohnt anspruchsvoll, aber gut lesbar, lässt French uns mit Cassie einen schier unglaublichen (Alb-?)traum erleben, dessen Auflösung völlig offen ist. Wieder hatte ich erst kurz vor Ende eine Ahnung, hatte zwischendurch immer wieder andere Personen in Verdacht. Doch das genialste an dem Roman: Wer der Mörder ist, ist gar nicht mal so eindeutig die Hauptsache! Sondern auch das Rätsel, wer diese junge Frau war, die Cassies Undercover-Identität angenommen hat, und wie genau ihr Verhältnis zu ihren vier besten Freunden war, mit denen sie zusammen in einem Haus auf dem Land lebte, ziemlich abgesondert vom Rest der Gesellschaft. Außerdem die Frage, ob das besondere Verhältnis der Freunde dem Ganzen standhalten kann. Diese Freundschaft hat etwas Magisches, auch ich, die an sich gerne abends nur mit dem Kater als Gesellschaft bei einem Glas Rotwein lesend auf der Couch sitzt, konnte sofort nachvollziehen, dass es toll sein muss, zu dieser Gruppe zu gehören. Ein so unglaublich vielschichtiger Krimi ist mir noch nicht untergekommen. Sehr gut gefallen hat mir auch, wie Tana French es vermag, Empathie für alle beteiligten Charaktere beim Leser entstehen zu lassen. Im Vergleich zum ersten Teil hat hier ein wenig der Schauer gefehlt, der durch den alten Mordfall und die Psyche des Mörders entstanden ist, aber tatsächlich ist hier der Schauer einfach anderer Natur. Ein weiteres Unikum, das weit aus der Krimimasse herausragt. Ich freue mich jetzt schon riesig darauf, den nächsten Band zu lesen!

Can I give a book six stars, please??? CAN I PLEASE???? BECAUSE THIS BOOK DESERVES IT. As my second French book, I thought I knew what to expect: amazing writing pierced with wisdom and an absolute shocker at the end. What I didn't expect was the feelings of overwhelming terror. Of love. Of forgetting I was reading two different stories all at once, both Cassie's and Lexie's, but being so immersed in the both of them that when I looked up from the page I had to catch my breath to re-center myself. And I certainly wasn't expecting to go through the twelve stages of grief as I read the last 10 chapters of this book. THE LIKENESS took my breath away every time I opened it. It scared me. It dragged it's hooks into my skin. I wanted to know how It ended nownownow but I also never wanted it to end. I can't put into words how much I loved this book, but I'm glad it ended up being my last read of 2019, and I know it'll stay with me for a very long time.