The New England campus setting was incredibly well drawn, very evocative and seeped in a dark atmosphere, it was also one of my favourite aspects of Donna Tartt’s novel. The dark academia genre is one of my favourite categories of fiction so I was definitely drawn to The Secret History, a book that is credited as sparking the beginning of this line of fiction.

Overall, it was a trying and highly original read. I think I enjoyed the second half of Donna Tart’s book far more than the first half.

I feel very fortunate to be given the chance to finally declare that I have read this classic novel, as it seems to have been on my TBR list for a very long time. I was only eleven years old when The Secret History was first published, which is my excuse for not having read it. The Secret History is a book that seems to always pop up on the top one hundred books you must read and it is regarded as a modern classic. As questions of morality, virtue, obsession and revelry swirl around this group, they will each find their character tested in this salacious tale from Donna Tartt. As these misfits search for something otherworldly, they are taken down some treacherous pathways. This eclectic and deviant collective are guided by their revered college professor as they toss around ideas from their studies in the classics. We are introduced to a group of young adults, all studying and living on a small New England campus. Now, a whole new generation of readers are able to experience this Donna Tartt modern classic. Thirty years ago, The Secret History was released into the world and it became a bestselling novel. I am glad I finally ticked this one off my book bucket list. The Secret History was a daunting and obsessive read. This modern classic is largely contributed to kick starting the popular dark academia sub-genre, of which I am a big fan. In honour of the thirtieth anniversary of Donna Tartt’s cult classic novel The Secret History, a stunning hardback edition has been released by the folks at Penguin Random House. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality. Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. ‘Everything, somehow, fit together some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together-my future, my past, the whole of my life-and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!’ The 30th anniversary edition of the bestseller that defined an age Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Crime, Mystery

Donna tartt reading the secret history