The Secret History ~ Donna Tartt

The Secret History by Donna Tartt is considered a modern classic. It centres around a group of students that take Greek class at an elite New England college. The students explore ways to escape the everyday and cross moral boundaries, changing their lives forever. 

I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t know a huge amount about this book when I reserved it at the library, just knew that so many people rated it very highly. In fact, I think the most common thing I had seen about this book was that many people considered it the dark academia book. 

My first thought about the book was that it was heftier than I expected. It didn’t look too much thicker than the average paperback but had almost double the number of pages. 

Having read If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio, I thought (after a few pages) it was going to be very similar, but apart from a small group of university students murdering another student, the similarities ended there. The Secret History did not have an easy plot to follow as it jumps around a bit and the students often spend several days up into the wee hours which makes time seem slower than expected.

The characters were a strange bunch. Reading the blurb, I thought the teacher was going to be the driving force in the students’ misdemeanours, however, he was barely in the book. I’m not entirely sure I liked any of the characters all that much. It was interesting to see how they interacted with each other after things started to go downhill and secrets were revealed.

Despite not really liking the characters, I enjoyed this book. My biggest issue was the length of the chapters. The first three or four chapters were on the long side but alright at around forty to fifty pages long. However, they soon got longer. I found myself having to stop halfway through chapters because they were over one hundred pages long. Upon restarting the next day, I had to skip back a few pages just to figure out what was happening. I am not a fan of long chapters. 

I finished the book feeling a little bewildered but actually enjoyed the book despite feeling like I had missed bits. It was one of those feelings that make you want to go back and reread (if it wasn’t six hundred pages long!). In the end, I gave it three and a half stars. 

C🌙