Osborne is a startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice ... Osborne takes his time baiting and setting his trap, and one of the pleasures of the novel is its unpredictability ... The novel takes on the tone of an existential noir, evoking writers like Jean-Patrick Manchette and Georges Simenon. Yet even as the narrative accelerates, the novel retains its sense of languor and style ... Beautiful Animals is unlikely to radically alter your understanding of the refugee crisis. But it may make you question the nature of your engagement with that issue and the world beyond ... Like The Great Gatsby, Beautiful Animals concludes with a rowboat on the sea and an image of light in the distance. But Osborne crafts a rebuttal of the green light that symbolizes Gatsby’s dream: 'They were like shooting stars, flaring up for a brilliant moment, lighting up the sky even for a few lingering seconds, then disappearing forever.' A world without the organizing principle of an ideal is a harder, bleaker one to inhabit. It’s a world without promises, and Osborne is one of its most dedicated chroniclers.

Osborne is certainly clued up about the blundering of decadent tourists amid more morally grounded locals. His cynical take on Western decay is pitiless, matter-of-fact ... Osborne is a master at imbuing his text with both dread and inexorability. Beautiful Animals positively drips with this-can’t-end-well ... So let’s not mince words. This is a great book. Truly difficult to put down, the novel exerts a sickening pull. Its climax and resolution will not disappoint. The social perspective is sophisticated, smart and uncomfortable, and the story is cracking.

I am always partial to a slightly unhinged, yet sophisticated female character with a problem, and Naomi doesn’t disappoint. She feels empty and angry and doesn’t know why ... After the drama of the main crime, the action moves to the sun-baked, 'defiantly morose' villages of Italy. It is there that Faoud makes his way to a new life, in the chilling knowledge that his own life is regarded as worthless. This is a theme that could be developed further, but Osborne has chosen not to do so. Nevertheless, Faoud’s plight and state of mind is unfolded with dignity and sympathy. Osborne offers an astute, unsentimental critique of the contemporary world in crisis ... In the last third of the novel, there is too much resolution — the tying up of loose ends that would be better off blowing in the wind. All the same, Beautiful Animals is mostly a page turner. It would make a blockbuster film. Most impressive of all, and there is much to be impressed by, Osborne handles surface and depth with immense skill, as only great writers can do. Beautiful Animals is his most accomplished book so far — a big, clever, crazed beast of a novel.

...a seductively menacing thriller ... Osborne made his name as a brilliant travel writer, and like his earlier novels, Beautiful Animals creates a thrillingly immersive sense of place ... What makes Osborne's work so compelling is that it's ruthlessly unpredictable. This is one writer who knows that life, even on a rapturously lovely Greek island, is no day at the beach.

Beautiful Animals springs from one of the most poignant images to come out of this dark chapter – the migrants who wash up on the white-sand beaches of fabled Greek islands ... It feels as if the instinct that propelled Osborne was a generous, expansive one – to show the change inflicted on a pair of pampered, precious young women by the proximity of the Syrian genocide. Unfortunately, the girls aren’t up to the task, their responses obvious and adolescent, the reader’s sympathies left wildly oscillating ... One of the problems with Beautiful Animals is that Osborne is an adjective and adverb junkie, his language over-stuffed and sometimes painfully high-flown ... Such weighty prose strips the plot of its zing, and we’re left with a novel that feels as if it aspired to be something more than it is: a novel that lingers only briefly in the mind, briefer still in the heart.

Beautifully crafted and psychologically astute ... The novel works engagingly on many levels, most basically that of plot but especially that of character and the fascination we have with people who bring out our moral disapproval. Osborne ultimately brings all of his complications involving Faoud, Naomi, and Sam to a logical but troubling conclusion. A rich, disturbing, and compelling read.