3.5⭐
Hmmmm.....I'll have to think on this one. 

For this being the final book in the Ripley series, I was expecting a lot. Granted, I'm not sure if Highsmith was hoping to write another one, or maybe she just didn't want to put the little bow on the entire story, but either way, this book is okay. (I will say, this one is significantly better than the car crash of the previous book). 

This particular story, while still very interesting, felt lacking. Though there were some great drama moments, by the end, I was wondering what all of that was for. It felt like I came to the end of the maze and found myself staring at a gold star sticker, saying "Good Job." Great...

Overall, I found myself wanting more character development and drama from Ripley. I saw so many opportunities for great development or twists. The series overall felt like a series of episodes, rather than one continuous narrative. Yes, there were some overarching plot points and details, but the main meat of each story was fairly self-contained. There wasn't a lot of bleed-over into each subsequent book, which I thought was a bit of a miss. 

I do think Patricia Highsmith is a great writer, and I do think that she was able to create a number of intriguing characters that had good dimension to them. I just think her overall plot of Ripley could have been so much more upward than what she produced.