First of all, I want to mention that Donna Tartt might quite likely be my favorite author from what I’ve read so far. I devoured The Secret History with my whole heart and The Goldfinch was in no way inferior to it. Yet, finishing this book left me surprisingly frustrated and kind of dissatisfied. Let’s start with the things I enjoyed about the book which in the end still made it a 3-star read for me: The portrait of the Dufresnes/Cleves, a family struck down by the loss of Robin, one of their own, was incredibly well done. Tartt described the characters and their different ways of dealing with grief in such a detailed and profound way that really made me feel like I knew them personally, as if the observations of their behavior, living spaces, etc. came from my own eyes. Also, the contrasting Southern structures of society in the 1970s viewed from a child‘s perspective felt very realistic and were an interesting addition (this kind of reminded me of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird‘) But what I mainly struggled with and what made it hard for me to follow through with the book at some points was the fact that I constantly found myself wondering where this story is leading or whether it is leading somewhere at all. I was waiting for answers all along, or at least some kind of twist in the mystery about Robin’s death that would draw me further into the plot and explain why we were brought so closely to some of the characters apart from Harriet’s family, most of all the Ratcliffs. I enjoyed reading about all these different family dynamics (especially from more than one perspective) and I don’t mind an open ending that much usually, but in this case I was really hoping for a clue of some kind at last (as Harriet solving her brother’s murder was the main plot). Instead, Harriet was irrationally convinced that Danny Ratcliff is the murderer of her brother from early on and focused only on taking revenge on him during the rest of the book, which caused a lot of chaos but neither provided any useful answers regarding the murder nor advanced the narrative. Also, it took me pretty long to get intrigued with the whole story as it started very slowly and kind of lost its direction multiple times throughout the book before it became somewhat thrilling in my eyes. Though, I wondered if that was what made the story much more realistic on the other hand, as we see it evolve mostly from Harriet’s perspective who is still very young and gets dragged into this harsh adult world which, although she is indeed very tough and intelligent, is naturally overwhelming. You can’t expect a twelve year old to not get distracted by anything else going on in her life or to not jump to conclusions, let alone successfully solve a murder mystery. With that being said, the story still lacked tension and plot development for me. Overall, I very much enjoyed Tartt’s writing style (she just never fails to create that certain atmosphere) and loved all the detailed, observant descriptions of the characters, but this book sadly just didn’t captivate me nearly as much as her other ones.