This is a really hard book to grade - as are most books really, reviews are so subjective - it was a little too knowing for a 4 star review, but I was absorbed throughout so three doesn't really do i justice. Definitely more a 3.5.
Tag a book with a Secret History reference and I am there (see also: I Capture the Castle, anything Streatfeild, The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets). I love a coming of age novel and if it's a bit dark and twisty so much the better. Jess is off to university, deciding against Oxbridge for Norwich thanks to a fascination with academic Lorna Clay, writer of a book (The Truants) so popular she's built a house in Italy (every writers' dream). Jess is a middle child of 5, thinks of herself as an outsider in her solidly middle class family, and is herself truant from her own life. Every choice she makes is influenced by someone else which makes her a maddening protagonist. She also has that 'I am so lost and plain and yet people are fasinated by me and I don't see it' vibe which is always irritating. Case in point, despite stomach flu throughout Freshers Week Georgie, upper class, sexy as hell, troubled, immediately makes Jess her best friend, handsome clever Nick falls in love with her and enigmatic Alec connects with her despite being in a relationship with Georgie. Meanwhile Lorna Clay also starts to take an interest in Jess...
It's hard to pin down what this book is, is it a murder mystery, is it a coming of age campus novel, is it a play on both? I can't decide whether the author herself doesn't know or whether she's being deliberately obscure, but it does feel a little bit too knowingly clever. However although I wanted to shake Jess most of the time and wish the whole sexy upper class troubled best friend cliche had been avoided, I did want to keep reading and there was a poignant moment near the end which gave the book enough of a heart to make me feel it was worth perservering with.

This has been described as a cross between The Secret History and Agatha Christie. Certainly Agatha Christie is central to the book but in essence this is a coming of age story. Jess is a middle child of 5 and ends up a fairly average university due to an obsession with a writer who lectures there. She falls in with a group of exciting new friends and becomes increasingly transfixed by the lecturer and the boyfriend of her best friend. This triangle will not end well and eventually spins out into a story of unexplained deaths and disappearances. It’s a highly enjoyable read, though rather unbelievable in places., best not to overthink the plot.

Told from the point of Jess a university student obsessed with Lorna one of the lecturers. She makes friends with Georgie, resulting in finding boyfriends and neglecting their studies. When Lorna joins their friendship group life becomes complicated. Jess begins to realise nobody is who they seem. Who can she trust? Will life ever be the same.

The Truants Book Review

📚 Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and the author for the free copy of this book in return for my honest opinion.

📚 The blurb: Jess Walker, middle child of a middle class family, has perfected the art of vanishing in plain sight. But when she arrives at a concrete university campus under flat, grey, East Anglian skies, her world flares with colour.
Drawn into a tightly-knit group of rule breakers - led by their maverick teacher, Lorna Clay - Jess begins to experiment with a new version of herself. But the dynamic between the friends begins to darken as they share secrets, lovers and finally a tragedy. Soon Jess is thrown up against the question she fears most: what is the true cost of an extraordinary life?

📚 My review: Kate Weinberg’s novel had me hooked from the start and I read in rapt fascination as the characters’ paths twisted, turned and tangled together. Jess idolises the enigmatic Lorna Clay and, at first, can’t or won’t see that there is something darker hidden beneath the surface.

📚 Jess meets Georgie early on in her life at university and seems quite in awe of her. When Georgie meets Alex, and Jess meets Nick, the four become deeply entrenched in a close and increasingly toxic friendship. As obsession and lust blend with secrets and pasts reinvented, the friends plummet towards almost inevitable tragedy.

📚 I loved the way the author gradually removes the rose-tinted glasses from Jess’s eyes and she slowly realises that all is not as it seems with those closest to her.

📚 The novel made me consider how we can all reinvent ourselves at times; whether through an abridged telling of our background in response to a question, or a glossing over of parts we’re maybe a little less proud of. Then there’s those who, for various reasons, choose to completely rewrite their history.

📚 It was quite chilling thinking of how much we rely on what someone chooses to tell us. And perhaps, more importantly, what they don’t...

📚 Perfect for fans of Paula Hawkins, I’m giving this a firm 4 stars! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

If you like reading unsettling stories, this is for you! The main characters are all self serving, but they also ‘get served’. It is by turns funny, sad, tense, and unpleasant. It wasn’t for me as I don’t enjoy feeling unsettled, but it’s well told and well written and I had to read it through to the end as I absolutely had to find out what happens

I am such a massive fan of The Secret History, so when I first heard about this book I was SO EXCITED! In THE TRUANTS, four first year university students become ensnared by their eccentric and brilliant professor. leading to escalating tensions, betrayals and, finally, a death. This is a story of finding out who you are, and about discovering what you are capable of, given the right circumstances.

I will start by saying that this is NOT a murder mystery. This was one of the main things that put me off a little, because I had seen it described as such a lot and kept expecting the actual mystery part of the book to start. But, in total, the actual murder (much less mystery) part of this book is very small, and not really the focus. It is a book about relationships and self-discovery, about getting to know yourself and your idols. It is also--I think--not fair to read this book with the expectation of getting a new SECRET HISTORY, because it also is not that. It is a fantastic book all on its own, well-written and gripping, with an ending that you will think about long after you have finished the book.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book - building up the characters, their back stories and the setting. However, the second half became tedious with the characters becoming more self-obsessed and unlikeable. The whodunit aspect turned out to be pretty far-fetched, and I'd lost interest by then.

Jessica Walker has always felt like she was a bystander, an observer, the lost middle child in a family who she feels invisible to. When she reads a book called The Truants written by Lorna Clay, she feels like Lorna's voice 'pulled me in and down like a rip tide...I thought, here she is at last - the person who will take me out of this small, airless world before the banality chokes me'.

She applies to the University where Lorna teaches, and soon finds herself enthralled by this dazzling woman. Here she also meets Georgie, a wild and wonderful friend. But her happiness is to be short lived when she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Georgie's boyfriend, Alec. When he turns his gaze upon Jessica, her world is to change forever. Is anyone who they say they are? Confused and guilt-ridden, she escapes to a remote island with Lorna, where things really begin to unravel. Who can she trust?

A complex storyline that explores obsessional love, lies, betrayal and the darkness that lives inside us.

First of all, huge thanks to NetGalley, the publisher Bloomsbury Books and the author for an ARC of this book ahead of its publication on June 25th. I always love finding a new author and Kate Weinberg is one I will watch out for now. In a diversion from my usual love of the psychological thriller, I was happy to engross myself in the lives of university students on an English Literature degree course. I was whisked back to 1997 in choosing my own Literature modules and becoming fascinated with the lecturers and their overwhelming intelligence. Jess is in love with the idea of university and in particular, the knowledge that she will be taught by her idol Lorna Clay, writer of 'The Truants' - a study of escaping the clutches of 'normal' life. An exciting cast of characters are used by Weinberg to really capture the diversity of university life; from Georgie, Alec and Nick. And then of course, the references to Agatha Christie are great in providing the extra layer of literary focus for not only us, but Jess who is studying Christie in her modules taught by Clay. Although the pace was not always as tight as I would have liked, I found it an enjoyable coming-of-age story and one that once I got into it, really liked.

The Truants is a coming-of-age campus story set in Norfolk and featuring Jess—a protagonist perceived as aloof and mysterious by others despite her own feelings of inadequacy, a dazzling new group of friends the protagonist is thrilled to be part of, a charismatic professor who blurs the boundaries between teacher and student, plus secrets, lies, infidelities and convoluted family histories.

However, there are also some less traditional elements: in this narrative the subject of adoration is a female professor rather than a male one, which makes it not quite as pervy but equally sinister. I also enjoyed the Agatha Christie theme, in particular the references to her own mysterious disappearance, though the book on the whole is definitely more of a relationship drama than a whodunnit. The South African journalist investigating the Marikana Massacre also added an interested angle.

The Truants is an enjoyable, compelling story that kept me turning the pages to unravel the complicated strands of relationships.

The Truants follows Jess as she goes to study at university and her small group of friends. Her charismatic professor Lorna has a reputation from previous years that mean her classes are wildly popular ; Jess it thrilled to be enrolled in one of them. The story was intriguing, but it was not one that I couldn't put down. 3 stars from me.

I still don't know how I feel about this book, having read it and enjoyed it, the questions the book left me with are too much! I like a solid ending to a book and this left me with nothing of the sort - which ties in with the theme of disappearance that runs throughout the whole book.

Jess begins university, having made her choice based upon a lecturer called Lorna, who she develops an obsession with. Along with her new group of friends the whole story twists and turns and leaves you surprised throughout.

Well worth a read.

Thanks to netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book.
The story is told from Jess's point if view and us about life on campus at university. It us about a group of clever misfits who yearn to break the rules.
I found this book ok overall.

No one is quite what they seem in Kate Weinberg’s novel The Truants. Jess is a typical middle child in a middle class family, she feels overlooked and under appreciated. She thinks university is going to kick start her life, especially if she can be taught by her academic idol Lorna Clay. One Christmas an uncle had bought the family her book The Truants and Jess has chosen her university specifically to be taught by Lorna. In Freshers Week, full of a cold, she receives an email telling her she has been removed from Professor Clay’s class. Furiously she pens an email explaining that her only reason for coming to Norfolk was to take that class, venting her disappointment. She presses send and regrets it almost immediately. However, the return email isn’t what she expected. She is informed she has been moved to Professor Clay’s other module on Agatha Christie.

Also in Fresher’s week, Jess makes her first friend in Georgie, who finds her feeling ill and helps out. They start to enjoy university as a fresher should, getting out to parties, exploring campus and meeting other students. Georgie meets a South African journalist on a fellowship and disappears for a few days. Then takes Jess to a party where Alec will meet them. Unfortunately for Jess they’ve met before. While out running through the woods she comes across a hearse that is totally out of place. As she walks towards it she sees a coffin in the back, with two intertwined bodies inside. Before she can walk away the man looks up and straight into Jess’s eyes. She notices the blue iris, perfect except for a tiny splash of hazel. Now, at the party she is staring into the same eyes, but knowing that it wasn’t Georgie in the coffin with him.

This is a very intelligent and gripping novel, full of complex characters. There’s almost a pattern to the relationships, in that every one except Jess and Nick, who she meets at a party, is triangular. Lorna is able to see these patterns, and the weak points of a person, then uses this to exploit and play with them. At times she reminded me of a cat toying with a mouse, particularly where Jess is concerned. Jess has the traits of a borderline personality in that she has few boundaries and adopts the traits of the person she’s with. This is a very dangerous combination when we mix it with the hero worship she has for Lorna. Lorna’s partner, Professor Steadman, observes that perhaps she should be setting herself apart from her students rather than courting friendships with them. Lorna replies that she likes to spend time with people who interest her and sometimes that happens to be a student. Here she’s either missing his point, or being deliberately evasive. There can never be an equal relationship with her and a student because she is in a position of power over them. She is careless with these student’s lives.

Alec is another character who is careless with other people’s feelings. All of his relationships are triangular: him, Georgie and Jess; him, Jess and Nick; him, Georgie and the woman from the hearse. He has a way of weaving magic with his stories of South Africa, but he uses them to gain advantage, either to seduce, to diminish the other person’s point of view or feelings. There’s almost a sense of criticism, to tell a horrific or heroic story in order to manipulate the other person into thinking their feelings are silly or invalid by comparison to the hardship of others. He’s an accomplished liar, because he always uses some semblance of truth. He tells Jess of his difficult younger brother Sebastian (Basti) who would do something wrong and give Alec the blame. One particular story involves a yellow dressing table and a glass horse, which Basti throws from a window then blames Alec. Jess later finds out that this story is totally fabricated; Basti doesn’t exist in the form Alec represents and the glass horse never belonged to his mother, but to someone else very important to him and to Jess. The relationships are so entangled there has to be a moment when it all implodes.

I enjoyed watching the relationship with Lorna and Jess, as it moves from student/teacher to friends, then a motherly role. Just as you think she’s become a true friend, something else happens that leaves me questioning everything. I could never pin down whether something is for Jess or her own benefit. I think she likes Jess, as much as she can like anyone, but she always puts her own needs first. Jess wonders if perhaps Professor Steadman had known her best after all.
‘There was something unknowable at her centre, something that shifted and changed like a trick of the light. Something that Steady understood about her that had always been vanishing. That may have wanted to be mythologised and missed. But didn’t in fact, want to be found.‘

Jess has been trying to have a relationship with someone who didn’t really exist, not in a fixed and knowable form. Lorna strikes me as a character who would pop up somewhere else, inventing a totally new persona. I became obsessed with the unknowability of her and whether the whole mystery is planned from start to finish. Why does Lorna move Jess to her Agatha Christie class? Why does she draw attention to the poisons used in her novels right back in Jess’s first essay? I think the author talks to us through Lorna, warning us we can look too closely and try too hard to find the truth. The magic of this novel is the mystery.

‘Because in solving something, in pinning it down, in reducing it to one reality, something of the magic is lost?‘

Through the whole story I was being intrigued as of where it all is going to end and was waiting for a big reveal in the end. I finished the book and all I had was a huge amount of questions..
What did I just read? (And not in a good way) Why it is called "The Truants" as I didn't think it had enough presence in the story to use it as the title. And overall I didn't feel that story had much of beginning or the end.. If anything I felt that it wasn't put together very well, at times I had a feeling that I'm seeing a "sketch" rather than finished work.

I stayed on the bus just to finish this due to the final twist which I didn't see coming at all.

Jess starts University and is befriended by the spirited but fragile Georgie. The group of friends then expands to include Nick and charming Alex/Alec. Then there is the charismatic teacher Lorna who is enigmatic and chameleon-like. Her area of expertise happens to be Agatha Christie and this is cleverly interwoven into the exciting plot.

There were lots of twists and unexpected turns which made for a gripping read.

For me it's not Tartt's sublime Secret History., but if you want a compulsive summer read this could be the book !

The hardback, published in August 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing, intrigued me. Still, somehow the book had sunk to the bottom of my TBR pile. So I was thrilled when my request was accepted on NetGalley in the run-up to the paperback release in June this year. Agatha Christie mentioned in the promo materials? Yes, please. Campus novel with a maverick lecturer? Yes, please. Woods and hearses? Yes, please. So as you can see I was duty-bound to enjoy this book and revel in all its Christie gloriousness. 
 
Unfortunately, I did not find the characters compelling enough to believe the story. They seemed to be very flat, exaggerated archetypes of personalities, apart from the protagonist who, dare I say it, had less personality than a pale cuppa made from dishwater. Do not even get me started on why there is a hearse in the woods on the cover! (Quite frankly it's a character prop, designed to give the character an air of mystery used in the bluntest possible way). The scene changes so quickly between a university in Norwich, varying characters' houses and Italy. The lecturer has a home there, why? Nobody knows. Characters leave in varying ways. Why? I guess there has to be something to keep the story moving somehow. There is a hasty departure from Christie references about a third of the way through, and they did little to propel the plot.  
 
Nevertheless, some of the descriptions were great, and it wasn't unpleasant to read. It just didn't give me the pull to go back to it. If you're going to compare a novel with the cult status book by Donna Tartt (The Secret History), you're setting the bar high for a massive disappointment if it's not good enough, and this one just didn't do it for me.

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to read this engaging novel. I have to say that until I finished it and read a bit more information about the book, I didn’t realise it was the author’s debut. It certainly didn’t feel like a debut!

The book’s narrator is Jess Walker who tells the reader the story of her life changing years at university. From being a quiet child from a middle class family, Jess decides to attend the dreary grey university in East Anglia because she is inspired by the book of star lecturer Lorna Clay. Having been cut out of one of the courses she originally planned to take with Lorna, Jess is accepted onto her other course regarding the works and life of Agatha Christie. Though the friends she makes in those first few weeks, open up a whole new world to Jess, they also lead to her darkest times. Saying too much more would ruin the mystery but hopefully this gives a flavour of what readers can expect.

Much like some of the judgement of Agatha Christie’s works, this description might sound like the book is a light mystery. But it touches on so many darker topics around obsession, drug and alcohol abuse and depression. It is a very well written book that I was hooked on.

I would certainly recommend this book to others. Without wishing to sound too cheesy, it had enough twists and turns, particularly towards the end, that I hope Agatha Christie herself would be proud of!

This didn't appeal to me - perhaps aimed at a different age groups. Parts were slow and the characters didn't seem particularly likeable.

With thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for a digital copy of this title. The Truants is variously compared to The Secret History and to Agatha Christie - both comparisons attracted me to the book. The story centres on an intense and unhealthy friendship between 4 students which leads to tragic events but this is by no means the same reading experience as The Secret History. I think that this may be a marmite of a book and divide opinion but it will have many fans. At the heart of the book is a good story which I found engrossing at various points. I thought the chemistry between Alec and Jess is very strong, as is Laura’s magnetism and the fascination she engenders in her students.
I think what I found detracted from the novel is the self- conscious edginess - for example Alec driving around in a hearse, some of the language e.g. ‘cock- teasing mid- September day...’as a reader this alienated me. Significant parts of the story emerge in the last chapters of the book which felt unsatisfactory and not entirely believable. There is a good story here but for me it was overly complicated and over styled.