The Wych Elm cover art

The Wych Elm

The Sunday Times bestseller

 Preview
This Season's Biggest Deal

£0.99/mo for 3 months + £10 Audible bonus

Auto-renews at £5.99/month after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Get this deal
Offer ends on 28 December, 2026.
More purchase options

The Wych Elm

By: Tana French
Narrated by: Paul Nugent
Get this deal

Auto-renews at £5.99/mo. after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 28 December, 2026.

Buy Now for £13.33

Buy Now for £13.33

This Season's Biggest Deal | £0.99/mo for 3 months + £10 Audible bonus

£5.99/mo after 3 months - terms apply. Cancel monthly
Summary

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Wych Elm by Tara Elm, read by Paul Nugent.

For me it all goes back to that night, the dark corroded hinge between before and after, the slipped-in sheet of trick glass that tints everything on one side in its own murky colours and leaves everything on the other luminous and untouchable.

One night changes everything for Toby. A brutal attack leaves him traumatised, unsure even of the person he used to be. He seeks refuge at his uncle's rambling home, the Ivy House, filled with cherished memories of wild-strawberry summers and teenage parties with his cousins.

But not long after Toby's arrival, a discovery is made. A skull, tucked neatly inside the old wych elm in the garden.

As detectives begin to close in, Toby is forced to examine everything he thought he knew about his family, his past, and himself.

A spellbinding standalone from a literary writer who turns the crime genre inside out, The Wych Elm asks what we become, and what we're capable of, if we no longer know who we are.

 Classics Crime Fiction Genre Fiction Gothic Horror Literary Fiction Police Procedural Women's Fiction Scary Fiction Mystery Exciting Suspense
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

Critic reviews

A truly great writer (Gillian Flynn)
The Wych Elm is her best novel yet (Erin Kelly)
Lyrical, suspenseful, unpredictable
My favourite novel of last year (Sophie Hannah)
Terrific - terrifying, amazing, and the prose is incandescent (Stephen King)
A masterpiece (John Boyne)
The finest crime writer around right now
One of the most compulsive psychological mysteries since Donna Tartt's The Secret History...impossible to put down
The Wych Elm should cement French's place in the first rank of great literary novelists
Her storytelling skills are incredible (Sarra Manning)
All stars
Most relevant
Having relished in the Dublin Murder Squad series, I was intrigued to listen to a Tana French story from the other perspective.
Excellent characters, with some quite shocking twists which keep you fully engaged to the final lines.
What a brilliant author Tana French is - when is the next book out? I highly recommend this and all her books.
Tim D

Tremendous book with a gripping storyline

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
some good bits but overall just too long. Narrator 'put on' women's voices which was pretty grating, but was fine other than that.

it's very long

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A brilliant story, gripping and well conceived. Mostly really well read, though at times a bit melodramatic. There were times I wanted it over, but that said, I stuck with it to the end. There were also times when I could’ve hit the golden boy myself!! Within the framework, a not so subtle comment about the way privilege can buy a person out of trouble, where the less fortunate would undoubtedly have had to suffer the consequences much more...

Prolonged agony

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is a pleasure, beautifully written, expertly plotted and narrated with great skill. I can't praise it highly enough.

excellent

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A well written story. Very detailed but also quite slow moving. Compared to her previous works, much less action and much longer drawn out chapters surrounding family chats. Some really interesting who done it type questions and some amazing twists. But they all take a long long time to get too, and the main character is energy draining.

Intriguing but slow

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews