Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing and certainly over-rated
Review: This book was recommended to me, so I felt I had to finish it. Even people who don't like the story seem impressed with the characterisation, but my biggest problem with this and with The Secret History is that I never feel involved in the stories and can barely identify with any of the main characters. Both books appear technically good, but there's little in either beyond an initial good idea. Not recommended. I very nearly didn't finish The Little Friend and won't read any future books by Tartt.
Rating: 
Summary: Good until the last few pages.
Review: I really did enjoy all of this book, and was really excited to get to the ending and find out the answer to the mystery. I was sorely disappointed. The ending is anti-climactic, and that's putting it nicely. I enjoyed the journey to the end but once I got there I felt like reading everything up to that point was a giant waste of time. There were a lot of things I liked about the book, but I can't get past my disappointment. It's fantastic writing and the characters are interesting, but I really want a _story_ if I'm going to read a _novel_.
Rating: 
Summary: Sweet and Sour
Review: Though I was initially drawn to this book because it seemed to promise an American South-based exploration of murder and mystery through the precoucious persepective of a twelve-year old female proatagonist, I was pleased to discover that it is nothing shy of a fantastic multi-faceted American novel full of remarkable character development and plot formation. Tartt tinkers with both character and plot chliches to produce rich and surprising depictions of people and events, consistently twisting our expectations. It's refreshing to encounter a novel that alights on the fundamental presuppostions of the reader, but yet makes no promises, and doesn't obligingly satisfy our need for unreal heroism and reconcilliation.
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for Godot
Review: This novel started out with such promise--an intriguing mystery surrounding the death of a little boy. However, 250 pages into it, I found myself waiting for something to happen. It's a wonderful character sketch--I feel like I know the inner workings of little Harriet's mind intimately--but...yawn...where's the build-up, climax and denouement??
Rating:
Summary: Not sure I'm going to finish it...
Review: I'm about 1/3 through this. When I saw that the kids were about to embark on another escapade I literally sighed and set down the book, wondering how many pages were going to be devoted to a half-hour's worth of action. Each scene starts out interesting, but then it's milked for everything it's worth. Almost literally every step they take is described in excruciating detail. It's plain boring! A lot of the characters are interesting, but nothing happens with them. This is an author who has been over-praised and thinks every word she writes is gold. Speaking of the author, when I first started wondering if I would bother to finish this thing and switch to reading, say, the Dictionary or the phone book, I looked at her picture on the back. Very self-important looking. She looks like someone who would write this book. Bottom line -- I honestly don't know if I'll finish it. Every time I get fed up, something catches my interest. Then it drags on and on again and I start getting fatigued. We'll see.
Rating: 
Summary: In the tradition of the great southern novel
Review: This was a wonderful book -- gloriously written, utterly engaging, and compulsively readable. It has the fluency and authority of a writer at the top of her craft. I love how completely I trusted her rich portrayal of Alexandria -- the smells, the flora and fauna, the sounds, the tastes -- and how completely convinced I was by the characters. I didn't see the richness of her portrayals as needing editing -- on the contrary, as a reader weary of the thin, archly minimalistic writing so popular in contemporary fiction, I was thrilled to find a nice, meaty, old-fashioned novel. This is a novel about a young girl's discovery of the consequences of her actions, and her dawning understanding of the intricacies of guilt and culpability. It isn't a murder mystery, but rather an exploration of the mysteries of the human heart, especially the ways we can violate and betray one another.
Rating: 
Summary: THE WORST BOOK EVER WRITTEN
Review: This book was horrible! I cannot even tell you how disappointing it was to start reading it and be totally bored to tears. If I could, I would return and get my money back!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: This book ended up in my trash can
Review: I really was looking forward to reading this book, however, by page 250 or so, I just wanted it to get to the point so I could put it behind me. The author's style of writing is intricate and delicate, making for long and eloquent sentences that wound their way into to paragraphs full of promise and drama. The disappointment, however, is how the author failed to make any of these paragraphs tie into anything even resembling a plot. What is sold to the reader on the back of the book as a mystery, is in actuality a muddle of characters, plots and subplots that have absolutely nothing to do with one another and failed to fully mature. I wasted so much time on plodding through this morass, that by the time I finally reached the wretched, anti-climatic end, I immediately threw the book away in frustration and disappointment. I didn't even feel it was worth of inclusion into my personal library. What a shame.
Rating:
Summary: Hooks you then leaves much to be desired.
Review: I loved The Secret History, so when I heard that Donna Tartt had a new book out I decided to check it out. I liked the beginning of the novel. About 200 pages in it was a struggle to force myself to read more of it...the end gets a little better but offers little in the way of resolution. I just expected more. The parts of the book about the Ratliff family are especially mindnumbing. I will say that Tartt is an excellent writer, and the only reason that I gave the book even 2 stars. She creates such beautiful sentences and paragraphs, but fails to make much of a story. By the time I finished the book I didn't even like Harriet, let alone any of the other characters in the novel. Also, I REALLY wanted to find out what happened to Robin but his murder is barely talked about past the prologue.
Rating:
Summary: Pathetic
Review: Last Christmas I ordered a few things from Amazon, and this book was one of them. I first saw it in a teen magazine, and from that summary along with Amazon's summary, I thought it was going to be good. Boy was I wrong. I never read it until this Thanksgiving, and just finished it today, when it normally only takes me a week or less to get through a book. This book had no point, and all the author did was ramble on and on about stupid things. She explained far too much, and jumped around more than a bag of jumping beans. I was very disappointed, and very sorry that my mom spent $15 on this.
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