A man returns to a childhood family home and while he’s there a skull is found in a wych elm. But when I read about her newest novel, “The Witch Elm”, I was immediately interested in the premise. I like French’s style, and I like her characters, but the mysteries themselves never really intrigued me as much as I wanted them to. I liked it enough, but didn’t really move on until I read “Faithful Place” a few years later. I first read Tana French with her first “Dublin Murder Squad” novel “In The Woods” around the time it came out. Review: Thank you so much to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel! Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden – and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.Ī spellbinding standalone from one of the best suspense writers working today, The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we’re capable of, when we no longer know who we are. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family’s ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Love spoilers? Check out my full list of ten-second spoilers here.Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from NetGalley.īook Description: Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who’s dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life – he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. The attacker at the beginning of the book was an artist angry about Toby’s gallery show that he had botched. He claims PTSD from his brain injury at the beginning of the book and is sent to a mental hospital instead of to jail. Toby and the detective fight, and Toby kills him. The detective still suspected Toby had something to do with it though, and came to his house to ask Toby about the emails that Toby had been sending to Dominic leading up to his death, pretending to be Susanna and encouraging his attention. He seems to have known about it all along.

Hugo took the blame because he was about to die of brain cancer, and the case was closed once he died.

He threatened to follow Susanna to college, so she came up with a plan to kill him and asked Leon to help. Susanna and Leon had killed Dominic because he was constantly sexually harassing Susanna and bullying Leon. Book spoilers ahead–if you haven’t yet read The Witch Elm, I suggest you turn back now.

The wych elm book review