For such an absurd premise, this book is so well-written that you very willingly suspend your disbelief to follow it through to the end. I listened to the audio up to the last 150 pages, and then switched to the book because I was becoming impatient with the amount of time it was taking up. However, I loved the audio production, and it was nice to still have all of the great Irish accents knocking around in my head as I finished reading it. ( )

Book 2 in the Cassie Maddox series

How long can someone assume different identities and keep it up? Seems Ms French protagonist is being given nine lives sending Cassie once more undercover. Like her first novel, the story is set in Dublin and the mystery entails an investigation into a homicide.

After being stabbed during her last undercover assignment Cassie had been assigned to the Domestic Violence (DV) division. The suspense starts when Cassie is summoned to the scene of a homicide. There, she and others are startled by the fact that the victim is the mirror image of Cassie; also the victim’s ID is Lexie Madison, one of Cassie’s previous undercover names.

The suspense grows when it is decided to hide the events from the media and have Cassie once again go undercover and infiltrate the dead girl’s world. Unfortunately the plot drags when much of the novel is centered on the day to day lifestyle of victim’s strange roommates. Even with some twists and turns the main problem is extreme slowness (boredom), it gets bogged down with too many descriptions of domestic life, leaving us with a mystery that is straightforward with few surprises. I found the plot bland and the characters missing development.

After reading the first novel “In the Woods” which I enjoyed, this was a disappointment ( )

Apparently, I am among the relative minority that thinks Tana French’s work is derivative and top-heavy. In The Woods might be excused as a first novel; the one with training wheels, if you will. It was overly dramatic and brooding with a side-helping of insanity. But people still compared French to Donna Tart. Tart is another one I don’t understand. I just don’t find it clever when authors construct several hundred pages of thick, atmospheric plot only to ultimately tell readers, “Insanity made them do it”. French and Tart have a lot in common in that sense.

I was also irritated when I realized that French had written herself into her own novels. Authors as characters are always a let-down to me. A gold star goes to anyone else who instantly realized that Cassie Maddox (who is described several times as part French) is actually Tana French under an alias.

Apparently, French took the comparison to Tart to heart almost completely in The Likeness. The characters, settings and moods seem lifted almost verbatim from Tart’s “The Secret History”, but with the extra booster of a crazy, look-alike plot scheme that seems like a rift on some old Twilight Zone script.

Here’s the saddest part: between Tart and French’s work, “The Likeness” is the better book! But I’m not giving out prizes for re-writing someone else’s plot. And I’m especially not giving out prizes for stealing someone else’s characters! ( )

I probably read this too fast.

So, I liked it almost as much as her first book In the Woods, and I loved how some things were different about it. This is a great demonstration of an author with a strong voice writing from the point of view of two characters (Rob Ryan in the first, Cassie Maddox in the second) and you can feel where the tone is the author's and where it's the narrator's. (Rob is much funnier than Cassie, for example, and when I realized that, I was disappointed at first, but then impressed.)

It's not quite a criticism, but I found myself perplexed by the Secret History-ish feel of it. It was almost uncanny, I even thought of these characters by their corresponding Secret History names, most especially Henry for Daniel and Camilla for Abby.

The set-up for the mystery is especially good: a murdered girl is identified as Lexie Madison, an alias created for Cassie when she was working an undercover assignment prior to the events of In the Woods.

I think anything else I can say veers too much into spoilery territory. Hmmmm. I liked how the few references to the events of In the Woods felt realistic and made sense. I go back and forth on whether I buy the premise of the investigation - could someone do what Cassie did? It seems so unlikely, but then that could be what makes it work, because the people involved would never suspect it, because if that was you, and you did suspect something, you'd think "oh no, that's impossible." You wouldn't even really think it, you'd kind of process it automatically.

Overall, very good crime novel that shouldn't be lumped in with any kind of genre at all. Solid A. Recommended to people who like quality writing with their police procedurals, although I strongly suggest that In the Woods and The Likeness be read in order. ( )

This book really pulled me in-- the characters and the private world they were trying to build for themselves stayed with me long after I read the book. Although the premise wasn't very believable, the characters were fascinating, and you almost wanted Cassie to abandon her real life and slip permanently into Lexie's. ( )