A review by bruts_bane
The Secret History by Donna Tartt

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is the first time in a long time where I’ve had so many emotions when reading a book. I’m going to write everything in spoilers.
Every character has sides to them you can’t even begin to imagine. They’re all very bad people, really. I found it so interesting how the first half of the book is pretty much solely justifying Bunny’s death. Going over how annoying and problematic he was. Then the second half is the complete opposite. Talking about how bad the other five are, and how comparatively, Bunny wasn’t that bad after all. It’s not that Bunny wasn’t a bad person. It’s that everyone knew he was bad, because he never hid it. But the other characters hide their faults and are so secretive. When Bunny was outspoken with his foul comments and such. It makes him seem like the bad guy, which he wasn’t very good at all, but he wasn’t bad enough to have been murdered. The book had such horrible language throughout it which was awful to read. From awful awful language on racism to homophobia and sexism. Honestly the racism was completely unnecessary, I struggle to see why Donna Tart added it at all. I find it hard to decide if I really like the book. I couldn’t put it down, but I also just began to hate characters. And being inside Richard’s mind sucked. I’m rating it 4 stars because of the actual storyline and writing itself, which had me HOOKED let me say! It’s amazing how much I loved the characters in the start, and how much I hate them now. Especially Charles. Awful man. And RICHARD UGH that one line genuinely might have traumatised me a bit. I kept hoping for Bunny to come back to life. And I still sort of love Henry a bit. I KNOW I know. He’s bad, but I liked his character. I found it so interesting how completely obsessed he was with Julian and learning and improving himself that he killed others and his own self in the end. ALSO I wish so bad we could learn what they did in that ritual when they killed the first man. There are a few plot holes like that, that I wish we knew. I never even understood why Bunny ended up going to the woods in the first place when he was murdered, if he was at a party not long before. Also I wonder why Richard is even writing this book? It seems like he had a purpose throughout when he talks directly to the reader, but it isn’t explained in the end. The way the brush off murder in the book is so bad, that’s the first sign to how evil they all are.
Beware of the trigger warnings. It’s a heavy heavy book. 
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