Three stars as a novel, five stars as a travel brochure

Beautiful Animals really grew on me. I wasn't sure at first: a couple of rich girls, one English, the other American meet on Hydra and become friends. When out walking, they come across a migrant, whom they suppose has come from Turkey and they decide to secretly help him. So far, so okay, but then things get weird. The English girl cooks up a plan that goes badly wrong and the book takes on a very different shape with a private detective and a chase through Italy. Although events turn dramatic Osborne keeps the pace steady, which I really liked, and doesn't stop his descriptions of landscape and sea which I also really enjoyed. I was worried that he wouldn't be able to resist ramping up the ending, but no, that was beautifully down-played too.
(Some of the writing especially towards the beginning felt a little overwrought, but this is a minor point.)

3.5 stars— easy to read in one sitting on the plane.

This book is very oddly written and that totally put me off the book. Too bad--I loved the idea of summer on a Greek island. Abandoned after about 10%

i thought this was great. a slow-boil very Highsmith sorta thriller. very well written. Lawrence Osborne is famous for his superb sense of place in his novels; this one is no different. i've never been to Greece, but after reading this i felt really connected to the island of Hydra. and all the characters are shits, which makes it even more enjoyable.

Abandoned at page 100

Could I do six stars? It's been said that Osborne is Graham Greene's heir when it comes to a "moral thriller." Yes. At least that. And the brother of Jane Gardam, whom I adore.

Wonderful review here, but the bottom line is...READ THIS.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/books/review/beautiful-animals-lawrence-osborne.html

***NO SPOILERS***

(Full disclosure: book abandoned on page 57, at chapter 5.)

Osborne didn’t write this engagingly enough to make me want to stick around to find out how the mystery plays out. I stopped at the point where two women stumble upon an injured man lying on a beach, rather ironic considering that sounds exciting and like a major turning point.

A big problem with Beautiful Animals is that it’s overwritten. Osborne loved writing description--paragraphs upon paragraphs of it--and even opened the story this way, something I always consider a flaw. To get to the heart of the story, which is the mystery, I first had to wade through his overwrought muck. No story is worth that. The dialogue he wrote to break up this muck is limp, and spoken among bland, indefinable characters. It's all so dull.

My understanding is that Beautiful Animals is a psychological character study, so it’s more a quiet mystery, not a grab-you-by-the-throat mystery-thriller. That’s all well and good--character studies, when done well, can be powerful--but a little grabbing by the throat could have helped this.

NOTE: I received this as an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher in June 2017.

The conceit of the book is interesting, but the language is stilted and the motivations of the characters not believable. Disappointing.