Though the mystery is engrossing enough in its own right, Knoll’s novel is most notable as a potent takedown of a reality-show-obsessed culture that seeks out the spotlight rather than harder truths.
There’s enough conniving, scandal, and snark to rival the most shocking episodes of Real Housewives ... Dizzying and overwrought but salaciously entertaining nonetheless.
...the characters are all extremely difficult to like ... I also struggled to follow the plot. The timeline is all over the place, and it was difficult to keep the sequence of events straight ... The mystery might have been more engaging if the characters had been more sympathetic and the plot less chaotic.
Knoll’s 2015 blockbuster, Luckiest Girl Alive, earned inevitable comparisons to Gone Girl, though American Psycho seems like a better fit here. Her take on the collision of celebrity and fourth-wave feminism — with its hunger games and anxiety and self-conscious branding — is wickedly sharp, but it’s coldhearted, too. Knoll would probably just say clear-eyed, and she may be right, though that feels like a hollow victory: Beneath their buttery highlights and Instagram smiles, her women are all cold metal and calculation; Real Housewives dipped in Nietzsche. Still, they’re good, nasty fun to spend time with for a while — even though they would probably never deign to appear in a review like this if they knew they’d have to share the space with another woman, and come in second place.
