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?).

I found this book engaging only when the characters discuss Agatha Christie. This sort of introspective narrative can work.but here our MC's examination of this period of her life seemed somewhat artificial. We are never shown exactly why they have such a powerful effect on her. And that's where the problem lies: she tells us that these two are such magnetic people. 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. The Truants reminded me a lot of The Lessons by Naomi Alderman (not a good thing).Ī more nuanced or interesting protagonist could have made this into a much more enjoyable novel. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Kate weinberg the truants