The French Girl

It‘s been ten years since their legendary summer holidays in France. Now, the six friends reunite in London. They have all pursued their careers, found new partners and almost forgot what happened on their last day in France that summer. The French girl who spent a lot of time with them went missing, already back then a murder investigation was set up by the French authorities, yet, without success. But now, her body has been found, buried in a well on the premises and she obviously did not fall into it by accident. Kate does not have a clue what might have happened, she only remembers her quarrel with her then boyfriend Seb. But now things are different and soon, Kate finds herself prime suspect in a murder case.

Lexie Elliott tells the strange murder case only from one point of view, Kate’s, which adds a lot to the suspense of the novel. Kate is telling her story, we, as the reader, only know what she knows, we only get her thoughts and thus are limited in getting the whole picture. Additionally, during the course of the story, you start doubting your narrator - is Kate reliable or is she lying to us and leading us to false clues? I liked this play with uncertainty and the fact that only bits and pieces of the whole story are revealed.

The strongest aspect of the novel are the characters. First of all, Kate who is quite lively drawn, second and even more interesting is Caro whom you cannot trust which is obvious right from the start. But also the other characters are suspicious, Kate’s friend Lara and her affair with the French investigator or Tony who is making advances towards Kate. The story itself, however, does not advance at a high pace, at times you wait impatiently for something to happen. The fact of only giving one perspective, on the one hand, adds to the suspense, on the other, it temps to skip pages you to learn what actually happened because the information you get is quite limited. The end and the solution was not really convincing for me, for me, the motive was too weak to justify such an act.