My favorite book of 2020. Suspenseful, intelligent. quirky. Lord of the Flies with college students without the dread and bullying. A period piece from the eighties.

I loved this book and their characters. Have a good read.

I thought that the narrator was the wrong choice for this audiobook and I found it so distracting that I decided to abandon it and read the book instead.

Boring. I didn't much care for the writing style, and couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters, so I abandoned it early.

Beguiling from beginning to end

It was well written, of course, but I tend to agree with the two star rating from others on Goodreads. Those who defend it and 'adored' it are all either 'yuppies' themselves or wannabe the elite spoiled little murderers they admire.

I wanted more depth on Julian (the only grown up). The one reason why I was glad I stuck with it was (on my copy) pages 510/511 when the narrator described his opinion of Julian in depth. It actually brought a lump to my throat and saved the book from a two star rating.

The rest was kind of disgusting and full of pretentious crap.

Just normal classics major stuff, you know, quoting ancient plays, drinking recklessly, getting too enthusiastic about Greek homework one night and committing murder.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt, set in the pretentious and elite, yet fictional, Hampden College in Vermont, follows Richard Papen, who leaves his hometown in California for an opportunity to study classics with an eccentric group of students and their selective professor, Julian Morrow. As selective as the group of students may seem to be, Richard is accepted into the group of 6 total, and unknowingly entangled with them for the rest of his life. The novel follows the group as they explore new ways to think and act in ways more advanced than their peers, and their eventual descent past normality and into corruption, betrayal, and evil. The Secret History by Donna Tartt is most notoriously grouped into the made-famous aesthetic called “Dark Academia”, which is centered around higher education, the arts and literature, classics, including Greek and Gothic literature and architecture, as well as romanticism and death. What this book does in its 544 pages exactly encapsulates everything outlined relating to the aesthetic, making it desirable for those interested in designing a life of their own in an effort to pay homage to what we call “Dark Academia”. Although published in the 90’s, The Secret History provides a gateway from the normal word of public school and english class to an underground society and higher education with more secrets than none. I recommend this book to all interested, generally, in learning and expanding their knowledge, the Dark Academia aesthetic, or just in pursuit of a novel that has the ability to send you to another world. 5/5 stars
@readingmouse of the Hamilton Public Library's Teen Review Board

This book is lush with bohemian rich kid atmosphere and frosty New England setting. I resented Richard’s university comrades but understood his attraction to their aesthetic lifestyle and his concealment of a past he views as dreary and inadequate. With the unfolding of high-impact plot intrigue is also an unraveling of each character’s manicured persona. His status as a kind of outcast (from his family and, at intervals, from his Hampden friends) and the sudden escalation of events makes him a barely credible sympathetic protagonist. Whether he deserves that sympathy by the end of the novel is a questionable and complicated game of ethics.

While the characters have flaws and r probably like no one you know they are interesting and the chaos of their lives leaves them little wiggle room.