In the Woods Book

Some wounds will never heal, and there will forever be a Rob Ryan-shaped scar in my heart.

Some books are written deliberately to provoke sadness. It's fucking easy to induce someone to tears when the book is about a dying cancer patient with a labrador retriever whose leg has been amputated, with one ear missing. The most effectively emotional books are the ones where you least expect it. The ones that sneak up on you.

There are differing degrees of sadness, the type that makes one curl into a ball, sobbing in the wee hours of the morning. I still can't pass by a bookshelf containing the book Forbidden without recalling that memory. Then there are books such as these. It doesn't make a person shudder in pain as much as it leaves one with an overwhelming sense of sadness and a feeling of unfulfillment. Of loss.

When I picked up this book, so many years ago, I never knew I was setting myself up for heartbreak. Ask anyone who's read this book. Their reply will range anywhere from MY FEELS to WHY DOES TANA FRENCH DO THIS TO US?!

The damnedest thing is, this book wasn't even MEANT to be sad. It just sneaks up on you. It makes you fall in love with the main character. It makes you sympathize with him. Rob Ryan is not a bad boy. He's a lost one. He is the kind that brings out what little remnants of maternal feelings there exists inside me. He is wounded, without being a new adult asshole. Don't get me wrong, he is sometimes an asshole...while not intending to be.

He is a little boy, who behaves carelessly without intent to harm. He is imperfect, he runs the other way when the going gets tough. He is scared to face the past, he can't think about the future. All he can do is live in the present, wholly devoting himself to his work because it's the only way he can avoid his shadows.

He would make a terrible husband. He would make a horrendous boyfriend. He will break your heart, and I don't even care.

I just want to love him. I just want to take care of him. I want to erase his hurt. I want to obliterate his pain.

Rarely has there been a character who has broken my heart so badly.

This is a detective novel, but it's not really. Don't get me wrong, there is an ample amount of investigation in the book. It can hold it's own against any fucking detective novel out there. It just doesn't feel that way because to me, this book is more poetry. I have rarely encountered better writing. I have scarcely encountered more evocative passages. The other books in this series does a better job of investigation, but I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, the series begins, and ends---the universe revolves around this book.

Do yourself a favor. Lose yourself...

...in the woods.