Krysten’s Review

I love Tana French, but this one’s not my favorite. She’s got a formula for her books that always involves a shocking murder and an even more shocking twist, along with a horrible past event that eventually causes some big screw-up on the part of the detectives, and usually that works for me. But this time, it was hard to swallow… it almost seemed forced. The murder was pretty heinous, I’ll give her that, but the twist in the plot and the detectives’ blunder just wasn’t that compelling. And the ending! No conclusion at all.

I was so annoyed by the wild animal Pat Spain was chasing throughout the story. That didn’t seem like enough to drive a person crazy. Downright, bat-shit crazy. (Was it really imaginary, or was something actually there? It’s never tied up.) And what about Jenny Spain’s issues? They seem to come about so suddenly, but there must have been something else going on. Mental illness played a huge role in the story, but it’s never actually addressed. Nobody does anything even remotely logical to deal with it; from Mrs. Kennedy to Mick and Dina to the Spains, they all just ignored it.

But French had to stick to her formula and smash the warm-fuzzies to smithereens, destroying not just their careers in the process, but any potential for a future between the two partners. Not because what happened was so horrible or even unfixable, but because the main character is too damn stubborn for his own good.

I didn’t feel connected enough to Kennedy to even care about his personal issues or how it was affecting him, especially because it becomes clear that he has never done anything constructive about them. He had plenty of opportunities to open up to Richie, to get Dina the help she needs, to deal with his own issues—and because he’s too macho and has to control everything, he didn’t.

I remember reading In the Woods and being blown away, feeling so distraught over the characters and how the story ended, watching the train wreck happen and wishing the characters would come to their senses in time… but none of that in Broken Harbor. It was a good read, and once I got going, I finished it in a couple days, but it’s not the caliber I expect from Tana French. I’m going to need a long break before I crack open the next one.