This novel is a little bit of everything - coming of age story, crime, mystery, romance. I wish the characters Lorna and Alec were more likeable or interesting, I really couldn't understand how Jess felt so obsessed by them. But an interesting read.

This was much hyped for me and just didn't quite live up to expectations.

If I had read this ten years ago I probably would have enjoyed it more. Maybe I'm just an old misanthrope.

The story wasn't quite a clever as it thought it was, the narrator was too aware that she was narrating a story for me and it fell a bit flat.

I think the biggest problem for me may have been that Alec just never seemed appealing at all and the story kind of hinges on him.

We didn't spend enough time in dramatic scenes where we experienced Lorna directly, we were always held at a remove and this didn't work for me.

I know many people who have really enjoyed this one but it was middling at best for me.

My thanks to the publisher and netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The “truants” of this novel are a cluster of four students at a university in Norfolk. Spending a great deal of time together they are probably scamping classes, travelling places in Alec’s transport – and old hearse. Jessica Walker is the narrator of the story and studies English literature; she meets Georgie on her first day and they become close friends, Nick becomes Jess’s boyfriend and Georgie will partner Alec an older post-graduate and journalist on furlough from South Africa.
Jess has chosen to study at this University because of the presence of lecturer (and successful novelist) Lorna who will lecture on the novels of Agatha Christie. This key point should not be overlooked because Christie writes about murder and the determination of responsibility. But her husband was unfaithful and this tripped a personal crisis. It is suggested when she re-established herself after this her novels were centred on the concept of the “eternal triangle”. Jess (and others) look to Lorna as not just a sage with regards to literature (exploring this theme) but also perhaps to life style or more. Lorna who spends a lot of time with the students for work will have to determine what is “acceptable” as regard to wider contacts even as she starts to build a friendship with Jess.
University students, although adults, are often still relatively young and inexperienced. Often away from home for the first time establishing themselves as independent people in a new and alien lifestyle. In the university venue they will meet a new host of people and build new friendships, often from very little. The pressures and impulses from this can seem extreme or highly charged and urgent. Weinberg gives an excellent impression of this.
But Alec is older, he has a back history and with his self proclaimed political journalistic background a certain glamour. There are early hints of another life outside the close friendship of the four, Jess is increasingly smitten by the man she sees him to be. He, aware of this, will first flirt and then offer a casual weekend away. Georgie is distraught by the betrayal by not one, but two of her friends. She will leave university. Jess, guilty and distressed will turn to Lorna for help and the subsequent story (no further spoilers) will roll out from this.
Jess, in Italy with Lorna, will then become aware that she has known Alec for many years – but that until the current university year they had not met since the death of a joint friend some years previously. But as she unravels this information from Lorna she is becoming aware that Alec may have been laying down a story, feeding her a tissue of lies, that he is a “player” leaving a trail of distressed and damaged women along his path. But if Lorna has been Alec’s lover then can Jess trust her to be telling the truth, even if she knew what it is? Does Jess need to distrust and isolate herself from Lorna too? As time goes by she will try and rebuild her friendship with Georgie, a woman who should never have been seen solely through the lens of Alec’s opinions, and try and unravel the nature of the truth about Alec and Lorna, so that she can come to terms with this emotionally traumatic year and move on. More information that speaks to the character of Alec will be revealed. How many “triangles” are there in this tale?
This is a clever novel of ideas that leaves the reader needing to constantly question what they are told. That concept is overlaid by the realistic depiction of early university life as a person rapidly builds new friendships, habits and behaviour away from their previous life. It is about seeing something in a person you want to see, rather than what is there and perhaps looking at a person as an idea or expectation rather than as a person on their own right, a person with feelings, experiences and desires at both the day to day and wider level. A person who has other friendships, loyalties and relationships that have requirements which can also pre-date your arrival on the scene. University life obviously teaches so much more than the simply academic. But it also lays down the foundation of one’s later life – unless you chose to totally turn your back on it, disappear, and try and reinvent yourself.

I’d heard mixed reviews about this so went in with an open mind as I didn’t really know what to expect . I can’t decide what genre you would put this in , it’s part drama, part mystery, part romance , part coming of age , it’s just a bit of everything which makes for a really great read . It’s very smart and well written with elements of dark humour. If you liked the secret history then I’d definitely revommmd this and will look forward to future books from the author .
Thank you netgalley for this copy .

Dark academia. Multiple mysteries. Untrustworthy cast of characters. This was definitely the book for me.

The Truants provides the readers an insight to the heady mind of a nineteen-year-old as she first ventures into the wide world outside of the stifling confines of family life. Our protagonist, Jess, journeys to university and experiences the sweet nectar of partial freedom that awaits her there. But something much more longed for also appears: Lorna Clay. Her idol, her new English professor and her, soon to be, so much more.

This was such a fascinating read that brought to mind two other dark academia favourites of mine - The Secret History and If We Were Villains. The way Weinberg introduced both the characters and the course topics covered was far more accessible than the prior two and, so, a more fast-paced and inclusive read was delivered.

This was a book filled with obsessive longing, unstable individuals, hedonistic allure, substance abuse, and ostentatious actions. Each individual portrayed a grandiose sense of their own importance but also betrayed a vulnerable underbelly to their characters that was slowly unveiled as the novel continued. There was much to unpack in each of them, and none more so than our reserved eyes into this world.

I anticipated a dark read but not how invested I would become in what was exposed as the reader was invited to journey through it. The open-ended conclusion left me seething for more, but also seemed the only apt way to close what had been a multi-faceted read, inconclusive in the best possible way and largely open to individual assimilation, throughout.

* spoiler alert ** Started off well... but by the time we were into the inevitable love triangle and it's aftermath,it was becoming a little dull.
Jess the main character was far from interesting,so I struggled to see why she attracted all those interesting characters to her.

Wasn't my cup of tea.

Initially I found this book slightly cliched - the naive young student, the charismatic older tutor, love and longing. And it is to a certain extent, but it is also compelling and gripped my attention even though it is quite long. Some reviewers found the central characters weren't sufficiently rounded to merit the adoration they seem to receive, and to an extent this is true. But the thoughts and feelings of the narrator as she entwines herself with these characters are well drawn and make up for this. There are occasional awkward or hackneyed phrases, which isn't surprising as this is a first novel, but overall I found it quite intriguing and I think it will stay with me in a way that a lot of quick reads don't.

"One of the best books I have read," according to Scarlett Curtis, "Weinberg is a major talent," says Alain de Botton. Having read The Truants, all these quotes tell me is that Weinberg is clearly very well connected in the literary world (either that, or they were reading an entirely different book to me) Another reviewer hit the nail on the head perfectly: at no point is the reader given any evidence to suggest that Alec or Lorna are worthy of the narrator's adoration, beyond what seems like a fairly standard 18 year old's crush. It is even more unclear what Lorna, a successful academic in her 40s, and Alec, a cosmopolitan journalist, see in a group of university freshers. The Secret History was so successful partly because it was clearly demonstrated to the reader how compelling the friends are, how all-encompassing and alluring their time together is, through devoting much of the narrative to them. In The Truants we have a trip to the pub and a visit to the theatre and... that's it? From such meagre spoils we are apparently meant to believe in a tight-knit and adoring group. But we can't, and we don't, and as a result the betrayal at the centre of the narrative falls flat. Weinberg clearly has the makings of a good writer - I continued reading rather than DNFing, after all - but The Truants is juvenile and unformed.

This has been described as the UK’s Donna Tart. This is an unfair comparison and misses the point totally of this quirky, imaginative and beautifully written debut. A must for lovers of Agatha Christie. Kate Weinberg has enormous talent and I look forward to future works.

Thank you to net galley for the advance copy.

DNF at 30%. Thought it was trying to hard to be the next secret history.

★★✰✰✰ 2 stars

This is the type of non-literary book that has literary aspirations...however, its laboured attempts to imbue its story and characters with a certain dose of moral ambiguity or depth ultimately fall flat.
In spite of its intriguing first few chapters The Truants soon followed the well-trodden path of similar campus/college novels: we have a main character who has a secret related to her past, she makes a new female friend who is more attractive and charming than she is, she falls for an alluring man who has secrets of his own, and she also finds herself drawn to her professor, who also happens to have secrets of her own.

I could have looked past the predictable and lacklustre dynamics around which the story pivots if the writing or the characters had revealed, at any point throughout the course of the novel, some depth or any other spark of vitality. Kate Weinberg's prose was competent enough but as the story is told through an unmemorable main character's point of view, much of it felt dull.
The Truants reminded me a lot of The Lessons by Naomi Alderman (not a good thing).

A more nuanced or interesting protagonist could have made this into a much more enjoyable novel. Our MC however is the typical forgettable young girl who somehow manages to attract the attention of people who seem a lot more fascinating than her...I write seem as I never quite believed that her guy (that's how interesting he is) and her teacher were as clever or as alluring as our narrator told us. And that's where the problem lies: she tells us that these two are such magnetic people. We are never shown exactly why they have such a powerful effect on her. This sort of introspective narrative can work...but here our MC's examination of this period of her life seemed somewhat artificial.

I found this book engaging only when the characters discuss Agatha Christie. The rest is an overdrawn love triangle that is made to be far more tragic and destructive than what it is (dating for a few months when you are a first year uni student...is it as all-consuming as that?). The college aspect of the novel fades in the background, giving way to the usual melodramatic succession of betrayals and shocking secrets. If the characters had been more than thinly drawn clichés then maybe I would have cared for this type of drama.

While this novel was slightly better than other clique-focused releases (such as the campus novel Tell Me Everything and the artsy Fake Like Me) I would recommend you skip this one...maybe you could try the very entertaining If We Were Villains or Donna Tartt's seminal The Secret History or even the hugely underrated The House of Stairs.