This book drove me crazy, 50% in a good way and 50% in a bad way. My anxiety slowly grew over the length of the book. As I watched the page count climb and Abbie and Damien’s relationship develop I cringed over the fact that Abbie had no intention whatsoever of revealing the truth. It’s so painful, at 50% of the way through the book, while Abbie and Damien are making plans to meet each others’ families for the holidays, to watch Abbie keep digging a deeper and deeper hole of deception. The premise was good, but it was so drawn out that it honestly became unbearable.

Really good suspense! I thought that all of the mom characters were compelling (although all three toed the line of being caricatures). The rape subplot made me extremely uncomfortable, especially since Chase is never tangibly punished for raping Maren.

Original Review:
Obsessed with the aesthetics! There’s a serene quality about Hampden: a radiant optimism that anything is possible, that nothing is more important than the academic future in front of you, that your youthful confidence and charisma will get you anything. 

 

The characters are all very vivid and stand out as one of the best parts of the novel. The Secret History sits on the fine line between genuine and satire that leaves you always wanting more. Everything character you both love and hate, because they’re all so complicated.

Reread Review:
The Secret History is such an interesting book to reread, because the illusion of the first half (the illusion that these students are somehow better than all of their peers) is broken. I really enjoyed this reread because there was so much comedy hidden in the book that I missed the first time around, because through the lens of dark academia, it all seemed so serious. Now it's comical to see how seriously the Greek students took themselves and their aesthetic, when I knew how far they fell.

The juxtaposition of the slow, serious, and considerate first half of the novel compared to the chaotic and off-the-rails second half of the novel was another factor that really intrigued me upon reread. 

 I am a poetry person, there are some poems that I just adore, but I just couldn’t seem to enjoy reading “Ariel”. The whole time I was just bored out of my mind. The poems within the collection had a dull and disjointed quality. The only common themes I could identify were quite negative - pain and suffering, isolation and loneliness, disorientation and dissociation. 

 

Such an inspiring story!

I found this collection to be really interesting -- the mix of feminist and queer themes within the horror genre was something I've never read before. Some of the short stories were better than others. I particularly liked Real Women Have Bodies, Eight Bites, and Especially Heinous.

A solid mystery, although not quite as neatly done as some of the other Agatha Christie novels that I've read.