This book. Donna Tartt, bless her. I just... This book left such an impression on me. Not only the writing itself, but also just the haptic experience of reading this book. Everything from the weight of the book, the thickness of the pages, the texture of the cover. Authors, listen up. This is how you get people to keep reading your book even when they might not want to keep reading. 

 In psychology, there is a principle that states, when asked to remember a sequential list of things, we are most likely to remember the first and last things on the list. I think this is particularly applicable to this book. To be honest, I wish I had skipped almost the entire middle portion. This isn't a short book, so I'm talking like 250 pages. But the last seven pages. THE LAST PAGES. Oh my gosh, my heart. Her descriptions, her language, the way she lays out for us the secrets of life. I stood on my soapbox and sang my praises to the world for 4 straight days after I finished. The end of this book made it all worth it. 

p.s. This book has major language issues and lots of drug usage, as I kind of hinted at above. One character, who has both a bad mouth and a bad influence on the protagonist in the middle of the book, is the main culprit. The language is the main reason I can't recommend this book to my mother, which is kind of my measuring standard.