The Witch Elm

The Witch Elm by Tana French, 509 pages.

Toby is taking some time to recover from the injuries he suffered during a very violent burglary. He doesn't feel quite himself, still a little shaky, as it were. Toby decides to move in with his terminally ill uncle and help while he himself sorts thing out and gives himself some time. While there, a long buried secret comes to light and many members of the family, a nice middle-class British family, with lots of perqs and privileges, have to revise their stories about the past. Tana French does an excellent job in keeping the twists and turns coming, right up to the end. No one is as innocent as they would like you to think. Tana French is always good.

The Crooked House

The Crooked House by Christobel Kent, 357 pages.

Alison has spent a long time trying not to get too close to anyone. She has a good reason. When she was fourteen her family was taken from her, and she has never quite recovered from that traumatic night. Her new boyfriend Paul has secrets of his own, and with their shared reluctance to share details, she starts to believe that she may have finally found something, someone. Paul convinces her to accompany him to a friend's wedding even though it's taking place in Saltleigh, the marshy seaside village where Alison had lived in the titular house with her family, when she still had a family. The book draws you in, and if the characters actions don't always make sense, they have enough craziness and buried pain so that you can at least see the point behind their vain hopes and muddled plans. By the end, though, it was just a little too convoluted. The very end was about two twists to far for my tastes, and the clues buried in the flashes of repressed memory, seem a little too deliberately placed, with the narrative misdirection standing out from the story instead of flowing along with it. A fun, if somewhat unsatisfying read.