I felt that this book took off kind of slow. All of the lectures of Julian's seemed to run on forever, but maybe it just wasn't my particular cup of tea. I really liked the perspective that this book was written from. It wasn't a detective novel, but a book from the killers POV. Makes everyone look much more human. The grammar in the book seemed to get me sometimes, it seemed that Tartt often misused was and were. However, this was still a page turner and I would definitely recommend it to anyone.