I liked this book a lot. I will preface all of this by saying it's a modern retelling of The Talented Mr. Ripley, but I have never read or watched TTMR, so I didn't have any preconceptions about the story going in. The first half of the story was part fish-out-of-water, part crazy surely-this-only-happens-in-books parties, and it was a lot of fun to read. The dynamic between Lavinia and Louise reminded me of Celia and Vivian from City of Girls (a book I loved). To talk about the second half would be spoilery, but if you know TTMR you have a pretty good idea of how things go down.

I thought the author did a really good job updating the story and the use of social media throughout, especially as a smoke-screen for all the characters to project the version of themselves they want others to see, was really well done. The absurdity of sad or drunk or desperate characters saying "let's take a selfie" all the time really set the mood for the type of people we were reading.

One thing I think this book could have done better, especially because it was published in a very different time than Patricia Highsmith's 1955 book, is the treatment of the characters' sexuality. All but one of the characters (justice for Mimi!) shown in some sort of same sex quasi-relationship is unwilling to confront their homosexual feelings or label themselves as anything other than straight. I really want to read The Talented Mr. Ripley now and watch the movie, but it's my understanding that TTMR has some innuendo or undertones of homosexuality (and Highsmith was a lesbian), and I think in this book, written 60 years later, the characters could have treated those conversations in a more modern way.