Louise is nearing 30, and aside from escaping her small, uppity New Hampshire home in an attempt to make it as a writer in New York City, she doesn't have much to show for it. Louise alternates between three dead-end jobs, Louise lives down the street from a creep who leers at her daily, Louise dyes her hair and starves her body to further herself from the person she was in the past.

Lavinia is 23 and on a glamorous sabbatical from Yale to write a novel. Lavinia knows "things happen around her," Lavinia is effortless and beautiful, Lavinia could choose to have any friend in the world. Lavinia chooses Louise.

Lavinia and Louise are screaming into the freezing cold sea, naked in the middle of the night on New Years Eve. Louise and Lavinia are getting matching tattoos that exclaim, "MORE POETRY!!!!" Lavinia and Louise are living together in Lavinia's posh Manhattan apartment, Louise and Lavinia are dressing together in Lavinia's lavish wardrobe of ballgowns and fur stoles at operas and parties and galas, Lavinia and Louise are curled up on the divan encouraging one another to write, Louise and Lavinia are spiraling into a deeply entangled, toxic relationship. Here's the thing: then Lavinia dies.

Warning: If you are on mobile, there are spoilers ahead that aren't formatting correctly! Proceed with caution if you want to be surprised by the twists in this book!

That summary mimics the odd writing style and narration of Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton. And the use of the phrase "Here's the thing:" which littered this book and should have been marking shocking, plot-twisting moments, but really just felt lazy and clunky because of its overuse. The style wasn't the only strange thing about this story. Even stranger than its style is the way I was simultaneously engrossed and repulsed by this book. There is a scene in which Louise is reviewing Lavinia's novel so far, and describes the book as "bad—the prose is too purple and the sentences are too long and the literary allusions are too forced and every other line is a quotation or character monologuing about the nature of Life and Art; or a character does something intensely symbolic but that doesn't quite come off." Hmm, that's almost exactly how I would describe this book, and I think the author must know this. Whether intentionally or not, Social Creature is at times overwhelming in its pretentiousness (especially scenes featuring Lavinia or Hal, another totally insufferable character in this cast). And yet it's such a dark, glittery, snowy, so-cold-you-might-die kind of book, that I couldn't put it down even when I was hating it.

There isn't a single likeable character anywhere in this novel (Well, okay, Lavinia's younger sister Cordelia is fairly charming and unscathed by the awfulness the rest of these characters are steeped in. I sort of wish

Spoiler

she had actually gotten justice in accusing Louise of killing her sister.

) That isn't a problem for me as I tend to enjoy books with unlikeable characters, but Lavinia is just completely unbearable and unredeemable in my opinion. When she finally dies (this isn't a spoiler, we learn this about her on the first page) I felt relief. It seems a lot of characters felt the relief of her absence as well, although most of them do not know she is dead.

The major, glaring plot hole for me in this book comes when

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after killing Lavinia, Louise pretends to be her on social media to throw everyone off the trail. No one even suspects she is missing for months. Yes, Lavinia's eccentricities may add up to an individual who suddenly, boldly changes her ways and disappears from the lives of those around her, but it's incredibly difficult to believe Louise could have gotten away with this for so long with everyone in their orbit being none the wiser. It's particularly so because she is posting all the places Lavinia is supposed to be visiting (Upstate New York, the Grand Canyon, Big Sur) and yet, the actual location of Lavinia's phone never leaves New York. I just find it so difficult to believe someone wouldn't have reported Lavinia missing, and law enforcement wouldn't have traced her phone right to Louise.

But, I guess if that had happened, we wouldn't have much of a story, would we?

The other thing that bugged me might not necessarily be a plot hole, but the book seems to imply that

Spoiler

Louise killed Virgil Bryce, and yet her mom is constantly mentioning him to Louise on the phone, suggesting they rekindle their romance. So I don't understand what the implication is? Did she harm Virgil but not kill him?

I don't know, I guess I would have liked to have seen this explored and explained a bit more.

So I get it. Burton is commenting on social media. She's commenting on toxic friendship. She's commenting on the millennial ability to be so utterly self-absorbed that we don't notice real-life glaring plot holes and webs of lies around us. Either the commentary needed to be more substantive and less obnoxious, or I just need to learn to suspend my disbelief for a fleeting moment in time and go along for the ride, which I suppose I did, in the end.

Do I recommend this book? Hmm. I can't exactly recommend this book unless, like me, you enjoy a fun hate read once in awhile. The New York City party scene setting was over-the-top but in a glitzy way that probably made it the most enjoyable part of this book. There were definitely some twists and turns I wasn't anticipating and as I mentioned earlier, I was totally hooked on this one, like a bad, sexy boyfriend.

I recently received a giveaway copy of Burton's The World Cannot Give and despite all the problems with this, her debut novel, I am looking forward to read it simply because I know she can put together a story that is compelling if nothing else. So keep an eye out for that review coming soon!

This book was also loosely based and often compared to Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I have on hold at the library. I'm interested in comparing the two. I have a feeling the plot works better before the age of modern technology, which was my biggest issue with this book's plot. Keep an eye out for that, too!