Tag: Donna Tartt

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Mystery
Similar to: If We Were Villains

Richard comes from a poor background and can’t believe his luck when he’s able to attend a prestigious college in New England. When he arrives, he soon finds himself emersed in the cultish Classics program, which necessitates that he take all his classes with the same professor and band of students.

The characters in this story were perfectly horrible. Tartt did an exceptional job of creating privileged, selfish students who gave no thought to how their actions impacted others, and whose magnetism mesmerized Richard. We know from page one that one of them ends up dead, and it was captivating to watch the web of relationships tangle and unravel, and to watch each person try to justify their actions.

The way that Tartt writes had me completely immersed in this story from the get-go. The setting seemed to come to life in a way that made it feel like more was happening than actually was. I usually struggle with long books (mainly because I like a lot of action and they tend to be more character and/or description-driven), but this on carried my interest and intrigue all the way through.

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