A rant review of THE SECRET HISTORY | Reading vlog 🍁

Hey guys, in this reading vlog I take with you on my journey through the Secret History by Donna Tartt. This ended up as a bit of a rant review but I hope you enjoy it!

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[michaelcurtis]

I just finished this book and it genuinely pissed me off reading it. So ridiculous. I only kept going because a friend was like “just keep reading! It gets so good” it didn’t get good. I totally understand your mood of being annoyed… because I feel the same way. I will give it that, it has made me feel something.

[prakharbhardwaj]

People who say this is their favorite book haven’t read enough - there are SO many other books that do everything this book does without the annoying, excessive, bland descriptions. You want to read eloquent unreliable narratives? Read Remains of the Day, Elena Knows. I’m always surprised when people excuse bad plotting because of good writing. You can have both!

[Smallpotato]

I love the slow build up. It's so atmospheric and the sense of dread - because you KNOW that Bunny will be murdered - gives the whole first 'act' as it were, a sense of impending doom. A sense of childhood innocence that will be destroyed forever. It's very much set up as a Greek tragedy. But even without that, my favorite bits of the novel ARE the small atmospheric bits, the bits where we look through Richard's unreliable rosecolored lenses, looking at the past, before all the horridness occured.

[nihad-m]

Her writing is so beautiful that I didn't mind the slow pacing at the beginning. I quite enjoyed it actually.

[GMChtz]

I just finished reading this book a week ago and I was looking for somebody that also wanted to rant about this book, so I am really glad I found you! I felt exactly the same after finishing this book! I was so angry! That is precisely what ruined it for me, that the book was so damn long and slow for no reason whatsoever! I kept thinking that this is going to get somewhere, something is going to be revealed in the end that will be a massive plot twist.... but no. It could have so much potential and instead it gave us nothing in the end! So, this made the length of the book even more infuriating! Had it been 300-400 pages, it would have been okay, but 600 pages for nothing?
I was also so disappointed by the characters! There was NO character development! The main character remains entirely the same throughout the book; the cold, distant and calculated Henry somehow becomes a tragic hero in the end (a bit unfitting for his character in my opinion); Francis being the only likeable character is mostly portrayed hitting on half the male characters in the group (reproducing a rather harmful stereotype about gay men being friends with other men), and Camilla, the ONLY female character in the group having NO character whatsoever, and only serving as the main character's object of desire/ love And this book was written by a woman... The only character that had an interesting change in his behaviour was Charles, who started as a quiet, likeable guy and ended up losing his mind and being angry, violent and manipulative.
Finally, the plot was just meh... Apart from what led to the murder, the murder itself, the human hunt for Bunny, the interrogation of some of the characters and the weird atmosphere before Bunny's funeral, the rest of the book was just 5 students smoking, drinking, occasionaly doing drugs and a description of some places... Why did that need to be what felt like most of the book? Honestly, if you asked me for a summary of the story I would tell you it is a group of 6 students who study ancient Greek at a university, they seem mysterious but they are just pretentious, they kill one of them because he was annoying them, and then they smoke one cigarette after the other, drink tons of whiskey and do cocaine (oh, and 2 of them take sleeping pills or whatever other pills they can get their hands on). What a plot...
In the end, she could have ended the story with the aftermath of Bunny's death and the weirdness around his funeral and the rest could have been completely omitted.

[ashleyxnicol]

*the secret history slides off my tbr* this was fantastic😂

[KieranHiggins]

Great review (rant?)! I’ve always wanted to read this book. I love the dark academia aesthetic - as an actual academic who teaches in a modern glass university in a city, I harbour a secret desire to find a job in a remote private historic college on the east coast of the USA. But it really seems like The Secret History just isn’t worth the hype. I wish they’d finally make the movie to save me the read haha

[ishathakor]

you can tell donna tartt has no idea how to write a good book when she does a bacchanal OFF PAGE. like, that's the only remotely interesting thing that happens in the entire book. and we don't even get to see it. ridiculous. i can't believe people think this sorry excuse for a novel is a satire. it satirizes nothing and it's also the most nothing thing i've ever read.

[Erdosign]

I originally read it soon after graduating from a small liberal arts college (though not from New England), and found her version of that experience felt really false to me. I also think as good as Tartt’s prose is, I don’t think it’s strong enough to make her unlikable narrator compelling.

[stargazerbird]

I liked it. I’ve read the classics and was a voracious reader all my life. Her writing is elegant and the story had depth and draws the reader into the cult world. It sags a little in the second half but I am sure that was deliberate to ramp up the tension. The one thing I might critique is the characters are not that different from each other but again, that’s kind of the point.