A review by nenya
The Secret History by Donna Tartt

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was truly interesting - I know that this is generally a very weak adjective but in this case, it is entirely true. It has a somewhat descriptive but then again very subjective and somewhat sentimental first-person narrative which took some time to get used to. But once I did, it was inevitable to fall into such a deep reading flow (I sometimes felt like the book was luring me in) that even the „boring“ scenes make you not want to stop reading. The characters in this book were so incredibly real and deeply (veryyy deeply) flawed which made the reading experience very intense and mysterious. There were some scenes (Chapter 8, i‘m looking at you) that just totally knocked me out of my socks, there is no better way to describe it. Due to the limited knowledge of the narrator and protagonist himself, plot twists are nearly impossible to predict here (unless of course they were being foreshadowed intentionally) which I loved.
However, it is very important here to check the trigger warnings because there is A LOT going on - stuff that is obvious very soon and other things that take a lot of time to become truly clear.
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