Social Creature

Social Creature, by Tara Isabella Burton, is a dramatic thriller about an intense, twisted friendship and about how far someone might go to make it in Manhattan.

At the beginning of the novel, Louise “works as a barista at this coffee shop that turns into a wine bar at night, and also writes for this e-commerce site called GlaZam that sells knockoff handbags, and is also an SAT tutor.” Which is a perfect description of getting by in the city, endlessly busy and working all hours, but nothing that sounds like a career when you’re asked what you do, and nothing that leads to a career.

When she meets Lavinia, Louise is instantly pulled in.  Lavinia is the other kind of busy in Manhattan. She’s constantly having amazing nights at amazing parties. Her nights out are the Met opera or an exclusive event, not the free night at the museum or beers at a friend’s apartment.  She’s on an endless sabbatical from school, working on a novel that no one actually expects to see finished, while her parents pay for everything.

I couldn’t quite accept the frenemy relationships in The Furies or in Good Girls Lie, but here it works. You guys, it really works. I absolutely bought it.  Like in The Girls Are All So Nice Here, the characters’ class backgrounds play a role in the beginning of the relationship. Later, Louise knows perfectly well that it’s unequal, and that being Lavinia’s supportive best friend is basically her job now. And it pays well, too, with a room in Lavinia’s apartment and Lavinia’s ATM PIN.

The suspense is amazing throughout the book, mostly as readers see what Louise is willing to do to keep her lifestyle. I love thrillers, but I can’t handle gore, and there’s a gore warning for just a moment. There were a couple pages about disposing of the body that I sort of skimmed to get to the alibi part. I’m fine with murder and hiding the murder in a great suspense story like this one, but actually disposing of the body… eeew.

Without giving away the ending or even too much about the crime,  I can at least say that I just loved the suspense as the murderer kept up the victim’s social media accounts, and laid an alibi in inspirational quote, fake travel pictures and check-ins. Social Creatures uses Manhattan ambition and desperation to set up a page-turning thriller with a dark crime and a twisted cover-up.