This is a fantastic book that take a Ripley-esque tale of friendship and deception and supplants it to modern day New York. Plot-wise this is a real page turner, which is elevated by its examination of lives lived through social media.

Social Creature is the literature version of Gossip Girl, fun to read but will have no lasting impact on your life. It isn't a wow! book but wasn't terrible. I just like a bit more punch with my characters, I felt like I'd read this before.

This feels like a strange book that is in two halves. I loved the first half of the book, the characters are sparkly, vibrant and fun. I didn't enjoy the second half as much. It was fine. It just didn't stand out to me like the first half of the book did.

The thing about this book is that if you've read its ancestors (The Talented Mr Ripley, Genuine Fraud) there's no surprise about the direction it's going in - in fact, the surprise is that it takes so long, almost 50%, to get there. What lifts it, is the portrait of Louise: constitutionally, it seems, made to struggle, with her insecurity and her lack of self-belief, shored up (or should that be down?) by having little money.

Lavinia is almost deliberately over the top, as she and her socialite friends party and drink and drug their way around New York - so is it so unfair that Louise should exploit this opportunity to take some of what they have?

Beneath the Gossip Girl glitz is quite a radical story, that this have-not should be allowed to take from those who have... I love the final fade-out scene. So though the party antics and mindless hedonism can get tiresome to read about, there's a rather transgressive trajectory that underpins it all.

The Talented Miss Ripley

"Nobody gives a f£&@ about you. You're a complete nonentity."

Shake together: Highsmith, Waugh, Fitzgerald (there's even a direct mention of Gatsby in the book, in case you had any doubts), add a dash of Gossip Girl and you've got the idea of the kind of writing and subject matter you're in for. It's important to say here that I don't think Burton is setting out to play in the same field as those authors, she is paying homage to them, with admittedly a less complex and nuanced story but a success nevertheless for its target demographic.

How do we measure our success and our achievements? Beauty? Wealth? The number of friends we have (literally or on social media)? Through the apparent superficiality of the characters in this novel, there are some pretty essential questions posed. The characters themselves are unlikeable and yet that's the bit we enjoy.

This novel is a guilty pleasure - it is immensely readable and I found I sped through it in a day. Burton does a great job of building the suspense and the impending dread. We know from the get-go that this is not going to end well - this is not going to be a simple Makeover Story.

The city of New York is ever-present as a character and the glamour, money and lights cover the trappings of a much darker underside.

Read it when you can give yourself time to consume it all in one go.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing, Raven Press and the author for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.