The Likeness

A Novel

By: Tana French

Narrated by: Heather O'Neill

Length: 22 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's Summary

New York Times best-selling author Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Searcher, is “[T]he most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years” (The Washington Post) and “[I]nspires cultic devotion in readers” (The New Yorker). 

“Required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting.” (The New York Times)

Now airing as a Starz series.

In the “[C]ompellingˮ (The Boston Globe) and “[P]itch perfectˮ (Entertainment Weekly) follow-up to Tana French’s runaway best seller In the Woods, Cassie Maddox has transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad - until an urgent telephone call brings her back to an eerie crime scene.  

The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Suddenly, Cassie is back undercover, to find out not only who killed this young woman, but, more importantly, who she was.   

The Likeness is a supremely suspenseful story exploring the nature of identity and belonging. 

©2008 Tana French (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

“[Tana French] aces her second novel. The Likeness [is a] nearly pitch-perfect follow-up to her 2007 debut thriller, In the Woods.” (Entertainment Weekly)

“Tana French puts a clever twist on every lonely child’s fantasy of leading a parallel life when she creates an alternate identity for her detective in The Likeness.... Cassie is a character - the eternal lost child - you can really care about.” (New York Times Book Review) 

“The writing is glorious, and the characters and drama so compelling.” (The Boston Globe)    

"This is a re-issue of a great book.

As I listened to The Likeness, I realized I had listened to it before. And lo and behold it was in my library from a several years ago. Tho I am am still enjoying it I do think that Amazon should be up front about this being a re-issue. That being said it is worth a second listen.

Captured by this book.

I listen to several books a week and have for years. I don’t remember one that pulled me is as The Likeness did. Every free minute I had I listened and the end of the book came too soon.

I would recommend the book to someone who likes to envision the setting of a book. The house and the garden, the family within the house, imperfect and fragile, were believable. The character for whom money was the most important thing was believable.

Well worth reading.

The writing...

This manage to get an overall rating of 3 stars from me because of Tana French’s talented descriptive writing and the great performance of the narrator BUT this story needed a deep haircut. There was a lot of redundancy and flat-out stalling, which is why I also gave the story just 3 stars. The premise is ridiculous because she could never take the place of a member of such an intimate group of friends. I’m sure there will be those who disagree with me but I doubt you could fool me even if I’d only had a casual relationship with a person. I’ll go so far as to say I’m sure of it. There’s something in the eyes, smell and movements of every individual that marks us and I rarely miss it. I might go along to get along with the idea if the character had been away for six months but no way after 2 weeks. They’d have had to be roommates that only passed each otherand then went their way. The relationship would have to stay at the level of just a group of people thrown together by the need to share rent but this group is supposed to be like siblings to one another and spent all of their days and nights together. No way...

Good but not mind blowing

In the first book, I couldn't stop listening. This second book I stopped listening for quite a while. It took me several months to start listening again. I'm not sure why but, maybe because it wasn't as gripping as the first, maybe it was the narrator I'm not quite sure. I finally finished it last week. I liked it but it could have been better. The characters were not as vivid as they were in the first book. I still consider it a good read but I was a little disappointed because the first book, in my opinion, was extraordinarily good.

A giant step forward

This is French's 2nd in her Dublin Murder Squad series, and where she made some typical freshman misteps in her first outing, all that is past by this one. Great characterizations, wonderful willingness to avoid the typical reductiveness of the genre. A great ear for dialogue, and an extremely able hand at presenting characters from either gender with authority. She will continue to deliver well crafted, bitter sweet and humane mysteries from here on out.

Unbelievable

Loved the character. Love the narrative voice. Have read and loved all of Tana French's series ....even more in audible than on the page. But find the situation central to the plot of The Likeness (which precedes most of the others published so far) required more suspension of disbelief than I can muster.

Meh

I have read a couple of other Tana French books and really liked them. I did not like this one at all but muscled on to the end in case it got better. It did not. This one had a consistent whiny combative negativity that wore on me.

Disappointed

I bought this book because I loved the previous one, In the woods. This one turned out boring, didn’t really hold my attention. And the plot is really far-fetched.

Amazing!!

I enjoyed every aspect of this story! The suspense, the twists, the emotion, the narrator. Worth every second!

Soooooo slow and long

Maybe it is just the author’s style, but this book seemed about 10 hours too long. There were interesting twists but, it was painful waiting for them. The longer the story went on, the less I liked Cassie. I felt exactly the same about the first book in this series and it’s protagonist so, I guess this author just isn’t my cup of tea.