The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly
My rating: 4/5 cats
hmm…
so i am giving this four stars cats because
1) there is no option for three-and-a-half
2) it was kind of the perfect book to suit my mood in the day-and-a-half it took me to read it
3) in the spectrum of “books that claim to be just like secret history” this one takes home high marks.
but really – it’s just a fast-paced crime thriller and is not likely to stay with me for any real amount of time.
it gets points for having the central character named karen. and having her be a genius of languages. but a lot of it is just a secret history tongue and groove DIY project. brilliant underachievers? crumbling mansion? wealthy layabouts sponsoring a poor friend?? mysterious happenings? moral blurriness? alcohol and drug anesthesia?
yeah, it’s all there. and i feel like i have written this review before, for all the books chasing donna tartt’s tail. and i was nineteen or thereabouts when i read secret history. i remember being riveted at my temp job, sitting in front of the usually silent phone, occasionally being roused from the text to crisply say “stewart, tabori and chang” into the mouthpiece. but since then, i have met so many people who have been really ho-hum about it. am i wrong? is my memory of it making it out to be something better than it is? was i just impressed at the time because it was something “new” tossed into the previously mild pool of my reading up to that point?
i hope not. i hope secret history is every bit as good as i remember it, and the haters are the same people who hate anything that falls into that “ambitious without being highbrow” category. if it wasn’t good, why would there be so many people trying to imitate it?
don’t answer that.
but – yeah- this book – a great diversion, definitely captivating, good characters. i don’t know that i would encourage anyone to own it, but it would be an excellent library loaner. it is a fairly uncomplicated story about cause and effect, with some odd human behavior thrown in. just a lot of me second-guessing the characters with “why didn’t she…” and “but why not simply…”
but that is its own kind of fun.
four stars cats for my own enjoyment, three if i am recommending it to someone else.
like you.
