The Talented Mr. Ripley (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (edit title)

• Rated 5 stars

“I think it is one of the greatest novels I read ever.”

• Rated 5 stars

“Don't see the movie, read the book. It's fantastic!”

• Rated 5 stars

“Way creepier than the movie. ”

• Rated 3 stars

“I had a difficult time deciding where to rate this book. On the whole, the writing was well done, and the author does a great job of developing her characters. the prose was, however, very dense and sometimes difficult to read. The main problem that I had with a large protion of this book was how incredibly boring it was. The main character (Tom Ripley) starts out in a tense situation, but it very quickly develops into a snoozer of a storyline. The excitement picks up after about 140 pages and from there on out it is quite exciting. The transition between the "two" stories here was fairly vauge when Tom decides to kill a supposed friend of his. The transition from "I like hanging out with this guy" to "I'm going to kill him" happens way too quickly for my tastes. Prior to reaching the excitement, I nearly put it down permanently on two occasions. Once things started happing, the story got really good. I found myself feeling guilty and like I had to cover up all this stuff, just like the main character was. Most of the boredom, I think, came from the fact that Tom Ripley just wanted to live "the life". Hanging out in Europe, visiting all the fancy museums and drinking liquor all day. I found this lifestyle very boring and drab and just didn't enjoy these parts of the book at all. I would definitly say that the book was worth reading, but would caution those that do try it that if they really want to get the exciting portion of the story, be prepared to slough through some pretty lengthy lead up in the beginning half of the book.”