Akiva Reads

by Tana French

I can see why In the Woods is successful: it's literary fiction about ordinary people making destructive relationship choices crossed with the strong, driving plot of a mystery novel. Murder mystery novels are almost always high escapism, for reasons I don't understand, so I can see the argument for this being an important and necessary addition to the genre.

But also: In the Woods is extremely gross-out horrible and the literary parts were cliche and/or frustrated me, as they usually do. I didn't mind that the secondary mystery was unsolved; I kind of enjoyed the whole "actually, they were probably abducted by fairies and then ritually sacrificed, aren't childhood memories mysterious" jawn. The first entire chapter (50 fucking minutes!) is Notes From The Narrator's Boner, which did not make me like him at all.

The audiobook reader was great, except for the very affected way he squealed "Eww!", which is a common line of dialogue.