French again writes very successfully about almost hyper real characters embodying another house. Rather than the tree, as you might expect, the result of the miscommunications, assumptions, adolescent dynamics, and other miscreant coming-of-age byproducts, fill the lived in feel of the Ivy House and its secrets. 

What made this so successful was the quality of the writing, which once again feels upmarket, as the story itself may develop into something like genre, but begins as a free wheeling pin ball where I had absolutely no idea where it was going nor what kind of story was being told. It was dark ( to be expected from French), and foreboding, due to the hindsight of our unreliable, heavily solipsistic narrator; the myopia of which helps to foster the growing tension of the peripheral, as we learn more and more about just how little he actually cares for and understands other people, including those close to him. 

As it develops into a murder mystery alongside the narrators inability to make sense of things due to a head injury and his lack of actual memory regarding, well who knows how much of his past really, along with the tandem mystery of why he was hurt at the start - things develop rather slowly but satisfyingly. The kind of ending you’d expect from French too. Always a good thing. I find her very reliable and have never been proven wrong on that front yet.