The French Girl
Lexie Elliott
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Buy *The French Girl* by Lexie Elliottonline

The French Girl
Lexie Elliott
Berkley
Hardcover
304 pages
February 2018
rated 4 1/2 of 5 possible stars

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Click here to read reviewer Luan Gaines's take on The French Girl.

Kate Channing was only nineteen ten years ago when she spent a summer in France with her boyfriend, Seb, and friends Tom, Caro, Theo, and Lara. They are not the first group of college kids to indulge in an idyllic week in a luxurious farmhouse, but the news that the body of young French girl Severine has been discovered dredges up secrets long since submerged. Although Kate has moved on with her life--and has worked hard to build her fledgling legal headhunter business--she now finds herself in the middle of an investigation. She fears being dragged back to the place where she had broken up with Seb, a place where memories float up unbidden of slim, lithe Severine, who disappeared without a trace.

Just back from seven years in Boston, Tom calls Kate with the news that Severine's bones have been uncovered in a disused well: "They found her. Her body." Tom's stark words seem entirely fated, as if all Kate's possible paths have been destined to converge. She imagines Severine's bones "clean and white after a decade left undiscovered," realizing for the first time that, at some point, Severine must have returned to the farmhouse. Mindful that the French police will want to talk to her again, Kate calls Lara, telling her that Tom has already called Seb and Caro. Life has gone on for this group, though time probably stopped for them a decade ago.

Author Lexie Elliott puts her own stamp on a formula that has made writers like Paula Hawkins so successful. Her Hitchcockian drama unfolds completely through Kate's first-person narrative as she becomes consumed by paranoia and Severine's ghost seeming to haunt her. Transforming into a dysfunctional skeleton of herself, Kate is unable to even get through the day. At first Severine is no more than a feeling, a presence resting on Kate's consciousness: "I put it down to the unwanted memories that have floated to the surface of my mind." Now, however, the visions of Severine are incessant. Memories "fetid and dank after being buried for so long" threaten to drag Kate down "into their rotten darkness."

With anxiety spinning, Kate searches for the truth. She turns to Tom, but he's unable to shed light on what really transpired that night ten years ago between Tom and Severine. Seb and Tom are not only best friends but cousins, bound by a loyalty far greater than Kate's. Lara, meanwhile, is asking about the handsome French detective, Monsieur Alain Modan. Modan tells Kate about last image seen of Severine: a CCTV camera at the local bus depot on Saturday morning. Kate reluctantly tells him about the journey back to the UK: how the car lacked air-conditioning, how she was hot, tired and tight-lipped; how Caro sat in the back, uncharacteristically pale and quiet while Lara seemed golden and sleek.

Modan sits silently, waiting for more, assessing Kate with his cold, dark eyes. He tells her there are inconsistences, things that muddy the waters. She tells him of Severine in a black bikini on the steps of the pool, knee-deep in the cool water, her narrow back perfectly straight. She was a self-contained girl, mysterious, alluring: "the kind of woman a man would literally go insane for." As time tugs Kate back into the past, she recalls how Seb couldn't take his eyes off Severine. She tells Lara about Modan's cross-examination asking "how we met and who was with who." At first it seems like idle chat, yet Kate can imagine the detective's active brain working away behind those dark, ironic eyes.

Elliott's slow-burn thriller discloses just enough information to make us think we've figured things out before she hits us with another plot twist that manipulates our gauzy impressions of Kate, Tom, Seb, Lara, Caro, and poor Theo. The action is always filtered through Kate's angst-ridden, looking-glass lens. Through her perspective, we look back and see the night she met Seb at the Linacre Ball at Oxford College, a relationship that morphed into something as logistically messy as it was reassuring. Meanwhile, Monsieur Modan and Tom's words tumble around in Kate's twisted mind. Out of Modan's suspicions comes Severine with her "walnut skin and secretive eyes," hovering just out of sight. London is caught in one more downpour. Weary, battle-scarred Kate is drenched and bruised, isolated and blindsided by Tom, Lara, and Caro. Was Severine's death caused by Caro's jealous rage? Was Seb a spurned lover? Is Tom actually capable of casual duplicity?

Though the book's climax is a bit underwhelming, Elliott tells her story in the contemporary timeframe with only brief glimpses into the past in France. This adds power to the fear swirling in the pit of Kate's stomach. From Modan, who appears at intervals inducing poor Lara to a permanent state of self-absorbed giddiness, to Caro needling and prodding and pecking away at Kate, and Tom and Severine's shady secrets, Elliott's compelling murder mystery is made all the more commanding by the slow unfolding of Kate's dark and desperate paranoia.



Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Michael Leonard, 2018

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