grace_madeleine's reviews
20 reviews

Told the story of my life in an insane way nothing else ever has. Recommend this to literally anybody and everybody if you’re feeling lost, if you know where you are in life or anywhere in between

Ok, so we all know that I love Donna Tartt (one of my fav authors). However, I would say that this is one of her darker reads so def look at trigger warnings before reading. That’s not to say I didn’t like it, which I did. It was very much the middle America (bones and all/ethel Cain???) “aesthetic” that it seems like every “booktoker” wants to see embodied in a book these days. So if you’re looking for that, 👍. That’s to say that it is very different from her other two books. No, it’s not east coast/ dark academia which is so prevalent in the goldfinch and the secret history. This has a very dark undercurrent throughout the entire book, and the fact it is from the third person perspective of a 12 year old girl is so interesting. I did find myself not being able to put the book down at so many times which is great for me (I have no attention span anymore). Some of the scenes made me physically recoil (in a good way) due to how Tartt is SO good at making the reader uncomfortable just through the smallest descriptions, so that’s how I knew this was a good book. If I’m having a physical reaction to a simple conversation and I’m making this face 😨 I know I like it. However, there are some parts which tend to drag a bit, but that’s not too much of a problem. In all, I would say this isn’t my personal favourite book of Donna Tartt’s, but it’s definitely still one worth the read. 

Ottessa Moshfegh is such a unique author in this generation. Her stories have always held the ability to stay in my head for months, sometimes years after reading them. The way she paints a picture is so special, and a collection of short stories was such a perfect project for an author such as Moshfegh. Her stories may take a while to get used to due to their uncanny quality and sometimes morbid and macabre nature. Reading them is like the equivalent of humans not being able to stop looking at an accident or disaster. It’s something so horrible, yet so intriguing to the point of not possessing the ability to look away.