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3.5 

The Boy Who Followed Ripley

By Patricia Highsmith
The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

"Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that 'penniless young man without a past' who will stop at nothing." —Frank Rich

The Boy Who Followed Ripley, the fourth novel in the Ripley series, is one of Patricia Highsmith's darkest and most twisted creations. Tom Ripley meets a young American runaway who has a dark secret that he is desperate to hide. Soon this unlikely pair is drawn into the seamy underworld of Berlin and a shocking kidnapping. In this masterful thriller, Highsmith shatters our perceptions of her most famous creation by letting us glimpse a more compassionate side of this amoral charmer.

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57 Reviews

3.5
“honestly this read like a 3 is company episode not a Ripley novel”
“2.5⭐ UGH! I'm so glad I'm done with this book... Where do I even begin? I don't know what happened with Highsmith at the time, but this book just fell so far from where I could see the story going. There was so much potential for an amazing plot, it just never went anywhere that you WANTED it to go. I personally found the addition of Frank Pierson absolutely bothersome! I will say, I did grow to like his character a little bit, but I just kept getting a lot of Bernard Tufts vibes from Ripley Under Ground. I don't feel like this character did literally anything for the story of Ripley, very disappointing. Also, so much many of the plot points were absolutely nonsensical. I understand that this world has a lot of stretching of the imagination as to what is possible with Ripley, but I mean some of the scenes had me wondering, "Am I reading the same author who wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley?" I'm probably being a bit harsh on this book because it was the longest of all of the books, but I also believe that this could have been edited down so much. Completely useless pieces of dialogue or scenes could have been removed to keep the reader engaged. By the third act, I was skimming pages. I feel like I'm now obligated to finish the series, I've come so far. I'm hoping and praying that the final book doesn't let me down...”

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