Books like The Secret History
What should you read after Donna Tartt’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Donna Tartt
- 1992
- 559 pages
- Literary thriller
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Secret History
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchIf We Were Villains
M.L. Rio
Shakespeare students rather than Greek ones, one of them dead, and a narrator confessing it years later from prison. The debt to Tartt is open and well paid.
- Dark academia
- A closed circle of friends
- You know the crime from page one
- Less elegant line by line
Best for dark academiaBabel
R. F. Kuang
Oxford, dead languages, and a small cohort who love the institution that is quietly using them — the same seduction of scholarship, pointed at empire.
- Dark academia
- A closed circle of friends
- An outsider narrator
- Fantasy, with working magic
Great matchThe Goldfinch
Donna Tartt
Tartt again, at greater length: another boy pulled into a beautiful world he has no business in, carrying a crime he can never quite put down.
- Long immersive prose
- An outsider narrator
- Beauty as an obsession
- No campus, no Greek class
Best for beauty as an obsessionBrideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh
The ancestor of the whole genre: a middle-class boy dazzled by an aristocratic family at Oxford, telling it all afterwards and full of regret.
- Beauty as an obsession
- An outsider narrator
- Dark academia
- No crime at all
Great matchThe Likeness
Tana French
French plants a detective inside a house of five graduate students who live like a family, and the mystery matters much less than the spell they cast.
- A closed circle of friends
- Dark academia
- Long immersive prose
- The premise needs real indulgence
Worth a look — with a warningBunny
Mona Awad
An MFA outsider gets absorbed by four girls who call each other Bunny, and then the whole thing curdles into something you will not see coming.
- An outsider narrator
- A closed circle of friends
- Dark academia
- Stops being realist entirely
What should you read after The Secret History?
The Secret History by Donna Tartt works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio — shakespeare students rather than Greek ones, one of them dead, and a narrator confessing it years later from prison. The debt to Tartt is open and well paid.
If what stayed with you was dark academia, read Babel by R. F. Kuang instead: oxford, dead languages, and a small cohort who love the institution that is quietly using them — the same seduction of scholarship, pointed at empire. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is the other strong option — tartt again, at greater length: another boy pulled into a beautiful world he has no business in, carrying a crime he can never quite put down.
Common questions
- What should you read after The Secret History?
- If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio, Babel by R. F. Kuang, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt are the closest matches. Which fits best depends on what you loved about The Secret History: dark academia, a closed circle of friends, beauty as an obsession, you know the crime from page one.
- What is the best book like The Secret History?
- If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio is the strongest overall match. Shakespeare students rather than Greek ones, one of them dead, and a narrator confessing it years later from prison. The debt to Tartt is open and well paid.
- What are books similar to The Secret History by Donna Tartt?
- If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio, Babel by R. F. Kuang, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, The Likeness by Tana French, Bunny by Mona Awad. Each one matches a different part of The Secret History rather than just its genre.
- Is If We Were Villains worth reading after The Secret History?
- Yes — readers who loved The Secret History tend to land well with it: a closed conservatory clique; death known from the first page; confessional, retrospective narration. One thing to know going in: less elegant line by line.
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