I have to go, it must be now...

In the Woods by Tana French

The bit for the ADD-ers: I was set to be spooked, to hear noises I shouldn't, to flip pages to see what happened and then flip back because I didn't understand how that happened with what I just read. It... sort of happened like that? However, it gripped me from the beginning, but perhaps one red herring too many left my body temperature nearly at room temperature by the end. Rather than chilled or spine-tingled, that is.

Want to hear more? Put on them hiking boots: Detective novels are either good because of the mystery or good because of the characters solving the mystery, and when the novel started I was excited to be getting a bit of both. Cassie and Robert Ryan were a lovely detective duo to be spending 450 pages with, and with Ryan narrating, and a trifle unreliable at that, I started raising my expectations page after page.

It's funny, because the expectations started high right with the cover art - it's just such darn good design - and I wanted to believe that I would see the woods wending their way through the words. For 75% of the novel, they did - but once Ryan spends the night in the woods that the reader has wanted from page one, it seems to coast on cruise control.

The Story: Robert Ryan is a detective in Ireland's murder squad - and a kid has been murdered right next to a thicket where 20 years before, Ryan was found with blood in his shoes and his two friends missing. In a startling display of poor decision-making, he and his partner take the case. Even though he can't remember a lick of what happened the afternoon his friends went missing, even though he's still emotional about it, even though he knows it might mess with what they will find.

More: It's tough to review a detective story because a lot of the enjoyment of the novel hinges on the end - how the pieces fell into place, and how satisfying it feels to place that final piece in and see the whole picture. I can tell you I was kind of satisfied - not 100 percent, but nearly. What French excelled at, though, was the two characters - Maddox and Ryan were a perfect duo, and I loved reading their interaction with one another. There's a lot of description of camaraderie that would have fallen flat if she didn't show their easy chemistry.

And the writing sparkles too - Ryan (playing narrator) apologizes for his metaphors and conceits, but they account for a lot of the joy of reading it. I can't exactly place my finger on why In the Woods didn't enthrall me to the end... but I think some of that blame lays squarely on a property developing subplot that goes literally nowhere. It was a base that had to be covered, maybe, but not to the extant it was.

Should you read it? You might want to - the duo of Ryan and Maddox is pretty irresistible, and the beats of the detective novel still seem fresh. But perhaps this one is meant to be retrieved from the library.

some kind of thunder inside.

Liar by Justine Larbalestier

Review for the readers with ADD: It says there right on the cover: this book is about a liar. That liar is a girl named Micah. Deciding what is a lie and what isn't is half of the fun, and the other half of the fun is going back through and re-reading the bits that she says are "true" after you just assumed it was true anyway. And then questioning that. Because she is, after all, a liar.

Still here? Cool. Let's dig a little deeper: So I found Justine Larbalestier by proxy - she is married to Scott Westerfeld, another YA author who has all of my respect and is lavished with lots of praise. I saw she wrote How to Ditch Your Fairy, which didn't really interest me too much, so I chose this book off of the Mission Library Branch instead, remembering the controversy over the cover. After reading Liar, I put my BART-first-impression on the line and added How to Ditch Your Fairy to my hold shelf. How's that for a recommendation.

I liked Liar especially because of the camera obscura that is the first person narrator, and it makes me wonder, in the best way, about the nature of story telling at all. Reading first person is a strange thing - here we are, on a journey in someone's head. Why did they write it? Is it a journal, or do we just get their typed out thoughts on the page? Or is it like we went over to their house for a cup of coffee and they just had 300 pages worth of junk to fill us in on? First person isn't the only perspective that begs these questions, but it is certainly puts the most at stake: why is Micah telling us her story?

Plot: I can't say much here, actually. I don't want to ruin this one for you. But the bare minimum should suffice: Micah is a liar. Her boyfriend disappears and then is suspiciously murdered. And everything that happens before or after is narrated and shadowed by Micah's meticulous, destructive lies/truth.

More: Micah is a surprising and ultimately chilling narrator because of this obscured viewpoint. When we find out her reasons for telling us the story - basically, to keep her lies straight for herself, while starting to tell some truth, we have to stop and take stock of what's happening. The best thing this book has going for it is not only the constant question of what Micah is lying about, but the why - why does she have to lie.

And the further you read, or maybe it's just me - I started to question why I lie too. And when a book gets you to do that - well, you're reading something sort of different. In a good way.

However, when all is said and done I didn't love Liar. The second half of the book made it hard to love. I won't go into it because I don't want to spoil anything - but I'm not surprised that I don't love it. It's hard to love a liar.

Should you read it? Oh yeah. 100 percent. Be sure to flip back and forth too, when more of the layers get pulled away, and see if you think that she's actually telling the truth, or just putting more layers on.

P.S. the title of this post are lyrics from a song by Dragonette called "Liar. It's a great companion piece to the book. Listen to it here.