The book starts with Karen driving through London. I imagine that the woman is the narrator of the novel, Karen. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.Ĭorrection: The Secret Life corrected to The Secret History.The prologue of the novel describes a woman waking up in the middle of the night after apparently receiving or making a phone call, and then she leaves in her car in her pyjamas. © Stargazerpuj and Stargazerpuj’s Book Blog, 2011. It was also a well-told tale of mistakes and secrets.ĭid you enjoy this post? You can subscribe to posts from Stargazerpuj’s Book Blog by mail or RSS to get updates. I enjoyed this psychological thriller, especially for the college life setting. Also see my review of Dominance by Will Lavender. I’ve loved other books like this – The Secret History by Donna Tartt, The Magicians by Lev Grossman, The Likeness by Tana French – although all of them are very different genres, what they have in common is the school/college life – a life that is highly romanticised.

But it soon pulled me in and I wanted to find out what had really happened in that old house all those years ago. The story doesn’t start with a bang, and for the first few pages I was left wondering where this was going.

And while Karen is hyper-vigilant and wants to protect her family from the past, the reader knows that of course, this will not happen. And in bits and pieces we start to find out what happened to bring them to this point. Ten years later, Karen and her ten-year-old daughter Alice pick up Rex from the prison. While it starts with great promise and a sense of adventure, we know that this is not going to end well… She moves into the rambling, rather decrepit house that Biba shares with her brother, Rex, and some other friends. When Biba engages her to teach German (which she needs to know for the play she is in), she gets a taste of the hedonistic life that Biba leads. Karen, who is studying linguistics has laid a staid, boring life so far. When shy Karen is befriended by the gorgeous Biba, her life changes forever. I love stories that glorify the student years – those years when consequences seem far away and the possibilities stretch endlessly. These are quick reviews of books I’ve read over 2012-2013. I’m doing a series of catch-up review posts to try and make up for my year of not blogging.

The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly