History Literature / TheLikeness

* FriendsRentControl: [[JustifiedTrope Justified]]; Daniel inherited Whitethorn House from an uncle.

* PullingTheThread: Lexie ''hated'' onions, a fact Cassie didn't know until after the others remark on how strange it is that she's happily chowing down on seconds of a dish with onions in it. She plays it off as side effects from her antibiotics, [[spoiler: but Daniel figures out she must be a fake anyway.]]

** The genius of Lexie, according to Cassie, was that she saw the original four, she understood that they needed a fifth, and turned herself into TheChick to complete their version of the FiveManBand.

** You ''could'' argue that they ''are'' a FiveManBand - Daniel as TheLeader, Lexie as TheChick, Justin as TheSmartGuy and Rafe and Abby sharing both TheLancer and TheBigGuy.

* IJustWantToHaveFriends: While to some extent this applies to the Fantastic Four as a whole given they were all lonely and cam e from less than ideal circumstances before meeting each other, it especially applies to Daniel. He's very eccentric and by his own admission, doesn't make friends easily, to the point he considers the rest of the group the only people he's ever loved in his entire life. [[spoiler: This is why he was willing to let one of them to die to protect their home and the others.]]

* RedHerring: Cassie eventually discovers that people have been vandalizing the house for a long while, and that there is a long-held grudge against the March family (and by extension, anyone living in the March house) for being cruel landowners, with one particular story about how one March possibly got a village girl pregnant and eventually killed her. [[spoiler: Ultimately however, the vandal was not involved with Lexie's death.]]

* FreudianExcuse: This is ultimately revealed to be the reason behind a lot of Lexie's (often behavior. [[spoiler: Her father states she lost her mother during the childbirth of her brother, which left her traumatized and afraid of getting in too deep with other people.]]

* BittersweetEnding: While Cassie is shaken up by the experience of having gone too deep in Lexie's life and [[spoiler: being forced to kill Daniel]], she doesn't really suffer any major consequences for the incident and accepts Sam's marriage proposal, concluding that while she wants to go back to Murder Squad, she can live without it if it means being happy with Sam. The remaining members of the group are later shown to have drifted apart, but while their current lives aren't exactly the greatest, they are ultimately livable and the implication is they will be able to move on and possibly even forget what happened.

* BittersweetEnding: While Cassie is shaken up by the experience of having gone too deep in Lexie's life and [[spoiler: being forced to kill Daniel]], she doesn't really suffer any major consequences for the incident and accepts Sam's marriage proposal, concluding that while she wants to go back to Murder Squad, she can live without it if it means being happy with Sam. The remaining members of the group are later shown to have drifted apart, but while their current lives aren't exactly the greatest, they are ultimately livable and the implication is they will be able to move on with their lives.

* BittersweetEnding: While Cassie is shaken up by the experience of having gone too deep in Lexie's life and [[spoiler: being forced to kill Daniel]], she doesn't really suffer any major consequences for the incident and accepts Sam's marriage proposal, concluding that while she wants to go back to Murder Squad, she can live without it if it means being happy with Sam. The remaining members of the group are later shown to have drifted apart, but while their current lives aren't exactly the greatest, they are ultimately livable and the implication is they will be able to move on with their lives.]]

''The Likeness'' is a 2008 novel by Irish author Tana French. Cassie Maddox, a Dublin detective still wrecked from her last case (which is the subject of French's previous novel, ''In the Woods''), is called to what looks to be [[MoodDissonance a rather peaceful cottage, except it's also a crime scene]]. A dead girl lies on the floor. She looks exactly like Cassie. What's more, she's carrying ID that identifies her as Lexie Madison, an alias that Cassie once used years ago.

* TheBeautifulElite: The Fantastic Four, according to Cassie.
** [[UpperClassTwit Unless you're asking Frank.]]

-->Frank told me once—and I don’t know whether he’s right or not, and I didn’t tell Sam this either—that all the best undercovers have a dark thread woven into them, somewhere.

--> It wasn’t until I was getting into bed, that night, that I remembered: that day on the grass, when something had clicked into place and I had seen the five of them as a family, Lexie as the cheeky late-baby sister. Lexie’s mind had gone along the same track as mine had, only a million times faster. She had taken one look and seen what they were and what they were missing, and fast as a blink she had made herself into that.

* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Avoided with [[spoiler: Cassie]], inverted with [[spoiler: Lexie]].
** [[spoiler: Lexie plans to keep her baby, but also plans to sell her share of the house to do so - a betrayal so deep and unfathomable that it drives Justin to stab her in his fury and confusion. Keeping the baby may be the right choice for Lexie, but it's an awful choice for her friends, and Tana French does a fantastic job exploring its ramifications.]]

* [[ToKnowHimIMustBecomeHim To Know Her I Must Become Her]]: Technically, it's the premise of the book.
* QuirkyHousehold: Cassie points out that the five of them, while not a perfect FiveManBand, are definitely some kind of family, made all the more poignant by the fact that none of the five have real families of their own. Cassie doesn't, either.

* WholePlotReference: The plot contains very direct, and likely intentional, similarities to Donna Tartt's ''Literature/TheSecretHistory.''

* BecomingTheMask: Cassie throughout the book. This is, of course, not unheard of among people who work Undercover.

* IdenticalStranger: Cassie and Lexie.