this book is SO FRUSTRATING! i cannot for the life of me figure out why it has such great reviews- except for imagining that all positive reviews were written by people who have never read secret history. seriously, this book is a complete rip off of donna tartt-its like the author read a secret history, decided to strip it down to the most superficial elements, and called it a day. the plot is the same, but the characters study Shakespeare instead of dead languages. and the author will not let you forget that! every character speaks in Shakespeare verse to one another CONSTANTLY. in fact, entire chapters are straight copies of various plays, with added blocking. i literally groaned by the end when they were performing king lear and i had to sit through another scene of them just rehashing the play. and i get it! i get they are lost in their craft and the line between character and individual is blurred-but there HAS to be another way to convey this.

while the mood and setting of the book is intriguing and the plot is interesting(i will always be sat for a good mystery), i found myself repeatedly wishing i had just re read a secret history again. all of the wonderful things about this book were straight from donna tartt.

the characters were one dimensional and seemed to constantly be reinforcing their stereotyped roles. meredith in particular really frustrated me. we get bits of something more to her character, but all semblance of depth is followed by absolutely baffling characterization. and the author is a woman? have you ever met a woman? the other two women in the book are also reduced to tropefied roles. wren literally spends the last half of the book crying and at one point mentally and physically collapses, but no growth or development comes from this. i might be misremembering, but i dont think she even has any lines after her monologue. fillipa has the most potential to be interesting, but as another reviewer said, it seems the author forgot she was part of the story and retroactively gave her random lines of dialogue. okay, she never shares anything about her past and yet remains level headed when disaster strikes….why??? please give me something to work with i am begging you