A review by petitecourtney
The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler

4.0

I've always been a huge fan of dysfunctional teenage school novels. This fell right into that niche, and was recommended to be after I read The Secret History. Now, this book is no Secret History, but is still a good book from and author who was a novice at the time.

I thought all the characters in this book were fantastically written, all- even minor characters- were well developed and interesting. Even though this book does have such a large pool of characters, I found myself enjoying all of them and their personalities.

The dark humor is this book was done quite well, and Flannery's POV served for an interesting read, angst included. I loved how this book was laid out, in a journal style- with flans annotations included- this proved for a very entertaining read and was fun to look back on after you finished the book.

The only thing I didn't love was the big

Spoiler

reveal at the end, that Natasha wasn't real, I was accidentally spoiled and knew it was coming. I may have loved it more if I hadn't known but I still felt it was a little messy plot wise. Again, it was fun to look back on the plot and catch the little hints about this. It did make me feel a little cheated, as a lot of conversations that took place throughout the book had to have either not happened or happened very differently. So that was a little strange.

Overall, I did really enjoy this book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves angsty teens or dark academia.