Reviews with content warning for Gun violence - The Secret History

Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

602 reviews

jfield351's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious relaxing tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A very interesting and mysteriously book. Very dark, particularly towards the end. Usually I love dark books, and I did during the middle, but the ending felt frightening, quite hard to describe really. It was well written and i could appreciate the beautiful language.

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afion's review against another edition

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3.25

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shakespeareantragedy's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

i think the flaws of this book are often disregarded because of its magnificent influence on the genre and appealing aesthetics, but to be quite honest i can name a few books to have explored very similar themes, better. the greatest tragedy of the secret history is that it is not, in fact, a tragedy; there is no catharsis, and the story ends imbalanced, no true pathos to be invoked, no peripeteia, or other such greek notions, which is a shame for a book that professes to be about greek tragedy. honestly, it would have been the same book if they'd all majored in statistics.

the plot meandered so far it wandered off a cliff and never found its way back, leaving you with endless strings of functionally unrelated scenes and dead-end tangents. why was it 600 pages long? why did julian serve very little ultimate role? why all that talk of fatal flaws if you won't let the flaws be truly fatal to their harbourers?

don't get me wrong, this was still a very good book. i leaned into the negative sides because the secret history certainly gets enough praise already, but many parts of it were just staggeringly well-written. i can't believe how attached i got to francis on god

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fjerda's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I feel punch drunk after reading this book. The Secret History is rotten on the inside and I am in absolute awe of it. Tartt is truly, inexpressibly talented.

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lydiavsbooks's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I think this jus scraped a 4 star for me. Its a long book and I have a lot of thoughts and feelings so its difficult to sum up in one rating.

I gotta start by saying that it took me a while to get into. Although I know its kinda the point, I found it difficult and frustrating to read because of just how pretentious and arrogant every single character is. If I could list 'rich people' as a content warning I could, that shit was triggering.

But then the plot kicks in and takes a dark turn. It becomes exciting, tense, intriguing, and it just feels a lot more fun to read the deeper you get into all the messed up shit. There were however several moments throughout the book where it returned to the very slow drawn out day to day events. I get that this may have been done to establish the characters more in order to make later events more impactful, but I didn't really get much from these sections and for me it just made the book feel longer than necessary.

I also wish we'd got a little more from our main character, Richard. He just felt a little lacking in personality, and seemed to only exist as a narrator, without an active role in even his own life. There were times it was a little frustrating at how blatantly unaware the main character was, and how the other characters would have to spell things out for him to even question anything. I would've liked to see more from inside his head.

I found myself being very overly critical and nitpicky when reading this, so I think that and the insane amount of hype this book gets may have contributed to my experience. I think sometimes its easier to explain criticisms than it is to explain what I enjoyed. But, I still really did enjoy this, its absolutely a fun dark twisty plot that feels very rich, with some very atmospheric writing. Definitely one that I think will stay with me, and I'm glad I read it.

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hunnybeemarie's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

The Secret History was everything I hoped it would be! It is, as we all know, THE dark academia book. It explores a ton of interesting themes in amazing depth. It has a lot to say about Beauty; beauty as terror, the desire for beauty, and finding beauty in the macabre. It's really interesting to see the way some of the characters find so much beauty and fascination in such terrible things.
It also discusses death and fate, isolation and knowledge, control and obsession, class and wealth. The way that Donna Tartt is able to weave so many themes into one book is phenomenal to see. There is never a point in which this book feels scattered or like it's doing too much. It keeps you enthralled from beginning to end.
This book is a masterclass in writing and intrigue. The fact that the "main event" doesn't happen until halfway through the book, but you are interested for all of the pages beforehand and all of the pages afterward, is quite a unique feat.
I finally feel complete in my dark academic dreams having finally read this book all the way through. I started it once before when I was 13. I got about halfway through and I actually annotated it back then! They are the ugliest annotations I've ever seen and it was pretty funny to be able to see them. I think I thought I was pretty clever lol 😂 I don't know where I got half of the things that I wrote down back then from! The most random, kind of pretentious annotations 💀
All in all, I loved reading and annotating this book, and it absolutely lives up to the hype. There are a few things that felt a little odd or unnecessary to me that are keeping me from giving it a full five stars, therefore I'm giving the secret history a still VERY good 4.75 ⭐
(Please look up the trigger warnings before reading this book)

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