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The Secret Place by Tana French
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The Secret Place (original 2014; edition 2015)

by Tana French (Author)

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2,7131715,298 (3.83)247
"The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls' boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption says I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin's Murder Squad--and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. "The Secret Place," a board where the girls at St. Kilda's School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why. But everything they discover leads them back to Holly's close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique--and to the tangled web of relationships that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen's links to the Mackey family. St. Kilda's will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls. Holly's father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined." --… (more)
Member:BooksPlease
Title:The Secret Place
Authors:Tana French (Author)
Info:Hodder Paperbacks (2015), 560 pages
Collections:Your library, To read (inactive)
Rating:
Tags:Fiction, Crime Fiction, TBR

Work Information

The Secret Place by Tana French (2014)

Recently added byManderNelle, kimmyers6, jbrownleo, Melissa.Smith, davidrgrigg, private library, isabellajw, JFB87
Legacy LibrariesCian O hAnnrachainn
  1. 10
    Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (RidgewayGirl)
    RidgewayGirl: Both books deal with the death of a teenage boy and private boarding schools in Ireland.
  2. 00
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    sarahx2012: Similar elements of mystery, plus a focus on what teenage girls are capable of.
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» See also 247 mentions

English (169)  Spanish (1)  German (1)  All languages (171)
Showing 1-5 of 169 (next | show all)
Another great mystery from Tana French. She kept me guessing until the end. I gave a lower rating because she replicated how teenage girls think and talk. It got annoying after a while but maybe that was the point. ( )
  DidIReallyReadThat | Jan 30, 2024 |
I enjoyed the book, in general. If it wasn’t for the over the top teenagers I’d have rated the book a solid 4. ( )
  knersus | Jan 23, 2024 |
Good but a little confusing. ( )
  lilybee145 | Jan 15, 2024 |
*** SPOILER ALERT******

This is my second book by Tana French......I read The Woods not long ago. I hadn't planned to read any more books in this series, but found this one in my stash....decided to give it another go.

Why? Why did I plan to abandon the series after one book.....although I really love French's writing style and storylines? The Woods absolutely ticked me off....the beginning storyline in the synopsis...the one that started it all...was left opened at the end.....I hate ambiguous endings!

While this book does end with closure.....I noticed another pattern in this series.....completely unexplained paranormal/ supernatural elements......both books contain these elements with absolutely no explanation.

Will there be some type of explanation later in the series? Is it all leading to something? I'm willing to try a few more books to find out. ( )
  Jfranklin592262 | Jan 14, 2024 |
My brain often wrestles with the wonder of letters. How twenty-six letters arranged into words. Turned into paragraphs. Filling up pages. Occupying our brain. How these letters turn into wonder. How the magicians who wield them can make them dance and weave. Do their bidding and inject into us all sorts of emotions. Push us to places we would not go on our own. Poison us with thoughts and plots and people.

Tana French is a magician. She is everything I love about fiction. She hooks me into a style of storytelling that I am not always a fan of. Fiction is fickle. We all are not going to like the same thing. French often tells a story like the eating of an artichoke. You pull off the outer pieces and you eat them. They are not always completely done. Some of those outer pieces are rough but you keep digging. Piece by piece you pull off the leaves and consume them. The deeper you get into the artichoke, the better it is. The flavor expands. Your tastes buds are tickled. Than you get to the heart of it. All the prickly artichoke thorns out of the way you are presented with the fur. You know underneath it is the prize. So you carefully scrape the choke off. Then all your work is paid for with the delicious finish line.

French takes her time. I don’t always like this. Pacing is a tricky thing but all her books have this trait in common. They pick up steam and barrel to the finish line. This book was no exception. Unsurprisingly, I loved it. There always comes a point in all French books where it becomes almost impossible to put it down. You just can’t wait to see how she gets to the heart of it. She is an expert plotter and her characters are always engaging.

I don’t like to talk too much about plot because that is for you to discover. So here is my bare minimum. Young friends at a boarding school suspect that one of their own is guilty of a murder that took place a year ago. Unable to live with it any longer one of them tosses out a fishing line to hook the police back into the investigation. The story than is told through two alternating plot lines. The police investigation and the girl’s viewpoints months before the murder.

All of French’s books are stand-alone books which take place in a shared world with characters over lapping. This one is no different. While you can read it without reading any of the earlier books I would not recommend it. I think you would lose a little of the tension. So if you are fan of the series, what are you waiting for? Go read it. If you have never picked one up then head out and grab a copy of In The Woods and enjoy the ride.
( )
  cdaley | Nov 2, 2023 |
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» Add other authors (15 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Tana Frenchprimary authorall editionscalculated
Timmermann, KlausÜbersetzersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Wasel, UlrikeÜbersetzersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Dedication
For Dana, Elana, Marianne and Quynh Giao,
Who luckily were nothing like this.
First words
There's this song that keeps coming on the radio, but Holly can only ever catch bits of it.
Quotations
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Wikipedia in English (3)

"The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls' boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption says I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin's Murder Squad--and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. "The Secret Place," a board where the girls at St. Kilda's School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why. But everything they discover leads them back to Holly's close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique--and to the tangled web of relationships that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen's links to the Mackey family. St. Kilda's will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls. Holly's father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined." --

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Book description
The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls’ boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption says I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.

Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin’s Murder Squad—and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. “The Secret Place,” a board where the girls at St. Kilda’s School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why.

But everything they discover leads them back to Holly’s close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique—and to the tangled web of relationships
that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen’s links to the Mackey family. St. Kilda’s will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls. Holly’s father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined.
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