As others have noted, this novel is a departure from Tana French’s other works. The plot is, perhaps, overly intricate, though the unreliability of the narrator provides an excuse for that. It is occasionally brutal, occasionally beautiful but, for me, the unlikability of 95 percent of the characters made this book a difficult read. I truly didn’t care about them. As a result, the long, long road to resolving what happened became a battle between mild curiosity about what might have occurred and increasing dislike of everyone involved.

I can't remember now which Tana French titles I've read in the past... they were on kindle, and something about that makes them always seem less "real" to me - I can't ever hold on to the titles of thrillers I've read on kindle. Sometimes it's even surprising later to see the actual book and how long or short it was. Anyway, I bought this one in a hardback copy and read it this weekend. I did glance over the poor reviews before getting it, but the thing that stood out to me was that the people who didn't love it said that it was too different than her other work. As I didn't even remember the titles of the other Tana French I had read (I mean, I liked them enough to read her again after reading one, but didn't really love them)... to me this was a good sign, maybe. And it was. I loved this book. I won't give spoilers, but it's tangled enough to keep you interested even if you already know the main answer, if you know what I mean. But the main thing to me is that the writing itself is beautiful. Highly recommended!

I really didn't like this. It was very slow and long. I only finished because I thought that the end would be surprising. It wasn't. This should have been a Do Not Finish book for me.

I agree with the other reviewers that didn’t like this book. The writing is spot on however the plot is miserable, the characters are miserable, and the ending was just downright awful. I kept reading hoping it would turn around, but it never did. This book was too depressing with no likable characters.

First of all, I wonder why the title of the book is The Witch Elm while in the book itself, the tree is always called the Wych Elm.Now the book itself. After getting to the halfway point in the book, I described it to myself as being like watching paint dry. The second half was no better. I did stick with it, kept thinking it would get better, but nope.