The French Girl

4.5 stars.

The French Girl by Lexie Elliott is a riveting mystery about the recent discovery of the skeletonized remains of a young woman who has been missing for ten years.

Kate Channing is trying to get her headhunting business up and running when her old friend Tom calls to tell her the shocking news that the remains of a young woman they met ten years earlier have been recovered. Nineteen year old Severine Dupas lived in the house next door where Kate, Tom, her best friend Lara, her now ex-boyfriend Seb, Caro and Theo vacationed in the French countryside. The French police reopen their investigation and it soon becomes apparent Kate and her friends are their prime suspects. Kate is haunted by the enigmatic and beautiful Severine as show more revisits her memories of the week she and her friends spent in France.

Kate is a surprisingly reliable narrator as she tries to make sense of the events of that fateful week in France. With her memories now filtered through new information and unexpected admissions, she soon realizes she might have missed or misconstrued certain things that occurred back then. She is still close friends with Lara and other than Tom, she has not seen the rest of the group over the last ten years. Her relationship with Seb ended on the last night they were in France and she does not have fond memories of their ill fated romance. Kate is still close to Tom and she is absolutely delighted to learn he just moved back to London after living in the United States. She is also somewhat surprised by the announcement that Seb and his wife Aline are also back in the UK. Kate is somewhat uncomfortable to discover that she will be working regularly with Caro, the one person in their group she never really clicked with.

French Detective Alain Modan has plenty of questions about the group's vacation and their interactions with Severine. The last night of their holiday was marred by a huge argument between the friends. The next morning, Kate and the rest of the gang returned to Britain without seeing Severine. Of course they were all questioned after the Frenchwoman's disappearance but the investigation turned up very little viable information. Now the group is reunited, Kate is literally haunted by the ghostly presence of Severine and stunned by new revelations. Despite this newfound information, she and the rest of the group are at a loss as to who could have killed Severine but there is no escaping the fact that one of them must be responsible for her death. But which one of them had the motive, means and opportunity to take Severine's life?

The French Girl is a slow burning yet intriguing mystery. The cast of characters is well-developed but not everyone is likable. The past and present are a tangled web of friendship, jealousy, obsession, secrets and ambition. While savvy readers might figure out who killed Severine and why, Lexie Elliott brings the novel to an exciting and somewhat dramatic conclusion. An brilliant debut that I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend to fans of the genre. show less

Six college friends spending a holiday together in a French farmhouse should be idyllic....a lovely break from everything. But cracks have already started forming in their solid friendships....they have dallied in sexual relationships with each other, some have secrets, others are starting to look towards careers and "real'' life outside university. And then....Severine. The beautiful French girl staying in the house next door comes in and shatters them all apart. The cracks explode into fragments. Severine disappears. And is never seen again.

......until her body is found in the well behind the farmhouse 10 years after that fateful holiday in France.

That week in France, what it did to their lives, and what happened to the beautiful show more French girl all comes rushing in to their adult lives to tear things up all over again.

I found this story to be much more psychological than thriller. Human relationships, emotions, memories and long kept grudges and secrets can be quite complex. I think we all have one person in our young adult past that we would like to forget....or wish we could go back and make one different decision. One night. One bad decision. Lasting repercussions. Or maybe, like for main character Kate Channing, it's a string of bad decisions that she never really got over. Bad relationship choices, bad emotional responses....the last tantrum of childhood before really growing up.

But did any of them murder Severine and throw her body down a well??

I have mixed emotions about the ending of this story. I"m both satisfied and dissatisfied....possibly because it's entirely realistic. Nothing ever wraps itself up perfectly -- all wrongs righted, all mistakes atoned for, all problems solved -- by the last actions in a story. But some things can be fixed.....some things are brought out into the light.....and some things are best forgotten. It doesn't make realism any easier to take.....just take a swig of your drink after and wash it down with a sweet swish of adulthood and understanding. Sometimes you take what you can get......and walk away from the rest. Perfect.

The story is well-written. It moves a little slowly, but that's what makes the psychological power of this tale work its magic on readers. It gives each person time to think on their own past as they see Kate Channing's past and present come crashing together. It takes time for rumors to get started, time for old emotions to come bubbling to the surface, and it takes time for her to figure out what happened on a fateful night 10 years before.....who killed Severine? And why? And do you ever really know anybody? Really KNOW them.....or do you just get to see the parts of themselves they choose to share?

I loved the fact that Kate Channing sees the dead French girl nearly everywhere while she is trying to piece the facts together in her mind. She sees her as she was in life, and also sees her dead, white grinning skull. The vision never interacts with her, never speaks, never touches her....but she's always there. Dead Severine.In both her beauty and her ghastly final silence. Seeing the dead girl really added something to the story, and kept Kate focused on the fact that this was really about a girl that was murdered, and not entirely about her emotions about that week in France that broke up their friendships

All in all, a great book! Very enjoyable. More psych than thriller/suspense for me.....but to others it might feel differently. Just the fact that it pulled up old emotions in me from my own college days means that it's quite an effective story. No dead bodies in my college past.....but a lot of little barbs remain in the recesses of my brain. Lost friendships. Lies that destroyed relationships. The first "real'' breakup. And those I said goodbye to at graduation and never saw again. Bad decisions. Regrets. What ifs. Everyone has them. Kate Channing's just happen to blossom into a murder investigation.

Great story!! Loved it!

**I voluntarily read ad advanced readers copy of this book from Berkley Publishing via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.** show less

Thirty-one-year-old Kate has recently started a legal headhunting business and is working hard to get it established so the last thing she needs is anything which will distract her attention. However, the news that a body has been found stuffed down a well at a house in France means that her life is about to be turned upside down as she is forced to confront events which happened there ten years earlier. It was intended to be a relaxing, post-graduation holiday for her and five fellow-students, one of whom was her boyfriend Seb, but the daily appearance of the enigmatic, beautiful Severine, who lived next door but came to use their swimming pool, created tensions within the group of friends. When the holiday ended there had been huge show more argument, Kate and Seb had split up and Severine had disappeared on the day they were returning home. An investigation at the time had proved inconclusive but the discovery that the body in the well was Severine means that the murder enquiry has been reopened. French detective, Alain Modan is sent from France to question the group of friends, now just five because one was killed whilst fighting in Afghanistan. Not only does this investigation, with the inevitable suspicion it arouses, threaten Kate’s fledgling business, but it makes her question her own recollections of the events which took place ten years earlier, as well as those of her friends.
This is not a fast-moving story but, told in first-person narrative from Kate’s perspective, explores how old, as well as new, rivalries and jealousies are exposed as the friends deal with all the pressures which emerge as the investigation gains momentum. The quality of the author’s gradual, detailed character-development is one of the central strengths of the engaging story-telling and, although the reader sees things unfold through the eyes of Kate, I felt that I got to know each of the other characters quite well. I really enjoyed the multi-faceted relationships, with their shifting loyalties, as suspicion fell first on one, then on another character and how they each adopted strategies to deal with present challenges, as well as their memories of past events. It soon became clear that each had had the means and the motive to murder the French girl although, for reasons which are gradually revealed, Kate becomes the prime suspect. As the investigation progresses, and as they feel their present-day lives begin to fall apart, their attempts at self-preservation become increasingly desperate. At a reunion of the five friends, the first since they had left France, Kate realises the extent to which she cannot trust either their memories of the week in France, or their responses now. Consequently, she becomes increasingly proactive in her attempts to find out what happened all those years ago, whatever the cost to either her friendships or herself.
I thought that in this impressive debut novel Lexie Elliott captured, in a thought-provoking and convincing way, the ways in which all these shifts took place and the almost visceral need of each of the characters to shift the spotlight of suspicion onto others, especially when feeling under threat. Just as Kate did, I found myself questioning everyone’s memories and motives as the story progressed and, as a result, there were moments when I found it rather disturbing to read. As I found myself increasingly engaged with the various shifts and reassessments of the evidence, I became almost as fearful as Kate that my beliefs about what happened would be challenged and disbelieved!
I liked the fact that the author didn’t use alternating “now and then” chapters to tell the story but opted to interweave the characters’ backstories with their current lives and their real-time reactions to the ways in which they are forced to confront their memories of the past. I thought that this made their gradual uncovering of memories, as well as their changing perceptions of all that had happened in France, much more realistic and powerful because, as a reader, I too was faced with trying to untangle the facts from unreliable and conflicting memories. This approach certainly highlighted the unreliability of memory and eye-witness accounts! It also added, at times, to an almost unbearable build-up of tension as buried recollections of the holiday surfaced and alliances shifted.
There is an extra character in the book in the form of Severine, who appears to Kate almost as soon as she discovers that the French girl’s body has been found. Initially as no more than an acute awareness in Kate’s consciousness, conjured up because so many memories have been resurrected, then as a pile of bleached bones, stacked in a pile on the kitchen worktop and finally as a very real presence. She becomes an increasingly frequent visitor in Kate’s daily life: a silent presence, as enigmatic in death as she was in life and apparently determined to oversee how the investigation into her death is handled. Although I can imagine that this literary device may not appeal to some readers, I found that Kate’s reactions to her ghostly companion added an important extra dimension to the flashback elements of the story, as well as to Kate’s struggle to both understand what went on in France and to clarify her own confused and ambivalent feelings about her changing relationships with her friends.
This is an eloquently written story which explores some powerful themes – the complex dynamics of friendships, the toxic nature of suspicion, the stresses of running a fledgling business, to name just a few – in an engaging and convincing way and, as such, it would be a good choice for reading groups.

With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased review. show less

The French Girl of the title is Severine. She went missing when a group of students were spending a holiday in France and she lived next door. Although the students were questioned about her disappearance her body was never found. Until now, that is. Ten years on her bones have finally been discovered.

It brings it all back for Kate. She was one of the students and she keeps seeing Severine everywhere. She is haunting her. Not as a ghost but as a figment of her unconscious mind perhaps.

I loved The French Girl. It's another book that I read in instalments on a daily basis, and I looked forward to each section. I wanted to know what had happened to Severine all those years ago. Was one of Kate's friends a murderer? Was Kate more involved show more than she was letting on? For much of the story these questions were swirling round in my head until the final half-expected conclusion.

The story is set completely in the current day. I did wonder if we would be thrown back into the past at some point as is often the way, but I was really hoping that that wouldn't happen. I wanted to stay with the way events were unfolding in the current day so I was really pleased with the action staying with the investigation into Severine's death.

I liked Kate very much. She's easily the main character and tells the story. She's just set up her own business as a legal headhunter and I really enjoyed reading the sections about her work. Obviously, the investigation into Severine's death has an impact not only on Kate's private life but on her work life too.

I also really liked Tom and Lara, Kate's two closest friends from that fateful French holiday and beyond. I was hoping and praying that neither of them turned out to be responsible for Severine's death. I'll leave you to read this excellent book to see whether they were or not.

The French Girl is an engrossing thriller about the past coming back to haunt you. I enjoyed the dynamics within the group, the way that none of them seem to quite trust each other and I thought the characterisations were spot on. It's an excellent debut novel, full of suspense and intrigue. I thought it was great. show less

Well done Lexie Elliott! The French Girl is brilliant. I love the psychological suspense/thriller genre when the story is done well, and Elliott hits it out of the ballpark on her first try (amazingly enough, she is a debut author). The plot is clever, the main character is very likeable (how often does that happen in a thriller-most of the time I am saying who does this kind of stuff??), and the pacing of the story is perfect. I was turning the pages as fast as I could to see what was going to happen next.

Elliott managed to keep me on my toes as I was reading – characters were slowly falling apart, secrets were revealed, and loyalties were constantly being tested. The presence of Severine was ingenious and added an interesting layer show more to the story. The ending was outstanding; I don’t want to spoil the ending so I will simply say I was worried it might go one way and thankfully it did not (and the book was much better for it). I loved that the main character Kate was likeable and made decent choices. I get frustrated when I am reading in this genre because the main characters are so frequently crazy or highly unlikeable. Kate was a welcome and enjoyable change.

The French Girl addresses the issue of how memories and events can be skewed by the facts we know (and the facts we do not know) which is certainly a thought-provoking concept. This idea plays out well in this book and made me think about how that issue plays out in everyday life.

I highly, highly recommend The French Girl – it is a fantastic read. Block out time in your schedule before you start it because you will not want to put it down once you begin. Thanks to Berkley Publishing for my copy; all opinions are my own. show less

The French Girl is Lexie Elliott's debut novel.

Six Oxford students spent a summer vacation together in France ten years ago. They were friends - and friends with benefits.. Their getaway doesn't go quite as planned - a beautiful French girl named Severine who lived next to the villa changes the dynamic of the group. And now she's changing the future. Ten years on, the police have found Severine's body in a well on the vacation property. The group is now part of a murder investigation by the French police.

Kate Channing is one of those six and she is our narrator. Elliott slowly ekes out the details of what happened that summer week. Something happened that irrevocably changed each of the six. Kate herself sees Severine as a presence and show more although she does not speak, Kate gives her emotions.

"Severine glances at him with disdain, and suddenly I wonder: if Severine is a creation of my mind, are her reactions my own deeply hidden feelings?"

The friends are still in contact with each other. Our sense of who they are is coloured by Kate's views. I found them to all be flawed and not overly likable. But could one of them be a murderer? It is the relationships between them that takes center stage in the book. Elliott's depiction of those bonds, memories, interactions and current sparring is excellent. She is a gifted writer.

The publisher has described The French Girl as "exhilarating psychological suspense". I enjoyed The French Girl, but found it to be a bit of a slow burn rather than a fast paced suspense read. But, that slow burn absolutely works for exploring the relationships. For this reader, that was more of a draw that the actual whodunit. show less

The French Girl from Lexie Elliott is an intriguing look at how we grow and mature, as well as how we often don't, through the lens of a missing/murdered girl. While the story is set at a moderate pace there are many tidbits throughout to keep the reader wondering exactly what happened ten years before the time of most of the narrative.

The flashbacks here are less the true flashback that puts us there and more the recollection from the mind, and the perspective, of Kate. This serves to keep us unsure whether what she remembers is indeed what happened, or perhaps only part of what happened.

I have seen some refer to a paranormal element in the story, and that is certainly one way to understand it, but I did not view it that way. I think show more a person under stress, especially when they are coming to grips with things with which they are uncomfortable, can create many ways to cope. Those coping mechanisms can also try to bring to consciousness that which the subconscious thinks, which accounts for any seemingly "knowing actions" on the part of the "apparition."

I don't think this will appeal to anyone intent on liking characters, even the most likeable can annoy you here. If you are more open to viewing these characters as real people going through a tough period then I think you will find a lot to enjoy. They won't all become likeable but they can be understood on their own terms and that is more important than whether or not I would want to hang out with them.

Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads. show less