Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“You’ll light your own bloody self on fire if you have to. And then you can pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you knew it all along. Congratulations.”

The Trespassser (Dublin Murder Squad, #6) by Tana French

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Short review for a book that has too much to talk about for me without writing a dissertation. I just find Antoinette Conway to be such an interesting narrator, and I love the way French plays off Conway’s weaknesses with the murder of Aislinn Murray. I had actually forgotten almost everything about this book, except how thorny Conway was as a narrator, and how her paranoia SPOILERS ended up being mostly unjustified END SPOILERS. I had also forgotten how angry Conway made me in her […]

Lost and Found

The Searcher by Tana French

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A hallmark of Tana French’s incredible body of work is how she will always use spaces in a critical and often harrowing way to her narrative. Wooded forests, the basement of an abandoned building, a rustic home for young academics…there’s always something mystifying and foreboding about how she can take the banal and make it come alive in ways one wouldn’t expect. Here is no exception. Playing with the familiar English/British countryside mystery, French uses rural Ireland set against the mountains. And as might be […]

Tana French is back with a vengeance and a penchant for Wild West-isms, and I am HERE. FOR. IT. 

The Searcher by Tana French

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This is a safe review; I’ll give you no spoilers and I’ll give you no major plot points- but I will let you know that no, we have not returned to the Dublin Murder Squad. While I found the departure disappointing in The Witch Elm, I found it thrilling here; the idyllic landscape filled with the insidious creep of small town communities. While we have not returned to the Murder Squad, we have returned to having a protagonist on the searching side of the law- and […]

Write faster, French! (CBR12Bingo: Shelfie)

The Witch Elm by Tana French

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I had such a hard time starting this book, not because I didn’t want to start it, but because I didn’t want to finish it, and I knew that I would have hit the bottom of my unread French books. I had also heard it was the best of the Dublin Murder Squad books, and I have to disagree, but even her worst for me was a four star, so no shame in being beaten by your own works. And it’s not like this was […]

“If I had to get there without friends, I could do it. Had been doing it. I’d never met anyone who brought me somewhere I wanted to stay, looked at me and saw someone I wanted to be for good; anyone who was worth giving up the more I wanted down the line.”

The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5) by Tana French

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This is still my least favorite Dublin Murder book, but I found a little something more in it this time. I was actually kind of dreading revisiting this one, because the prospect of getting inside all those teenage girls’ heads just felt like way too much to handle at the moment. I used to be a teenaged girl, and I do not miss it. French is such a good writer, so evocative, that I just knew it was going to bring me right back to […]

Have I told you about my lord and savior, Tana French? (Bingo – Shelfie)

Faithful Place by Tana French

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I heart Tana French. If someone gives me a blanketed, “I’m looking for a book to read” I typically check to see if they like thrillers and if so, start bellowing “Tana French Tana French Tana Freeeeeench.” I own all of her Dublin Murder Series, shown here (if you squint). Behold, the rad bookshelf that my husband built! It goes around three of the four walls of this room. I looove it because it a) saves space b) displays our books in a fun way […]



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