I can't find where I wrote this, but I described Crosley's writing persona (having read her other two books) as that of a friend you run into at a party who fits in perfectly and has the best bon mots and she knows it and needs to make sure you know it, too.

This is a book that traffics in a certain 2013 Gawker era of sharpness; lots of cute skewering of New York culture, lots of SNL-skit-fidelity caricatures of bad boyfriends and vapid friends. The narrator — Crosley by another name — is clever and mean. The framing device makes no sense, and is best understood as a hackneyed way to line up a series of erstwhile deuteragonists for Crosley to tee off on. (And sometimes, in fairness, the teeing off is fun.) x There are parts of this book that are very good; most of them are quick asides. The one 'big' one — the one that the best version of the book is all about — is the protagonist's relationship with the absent mentor figure, territory that The Friend handled more deftly and with more interest. Having thought of that book, I can't close this review with any other conclusion: that book feels flatly superior to this one.

★★

Highlights

The same event could happen to four different people and one would deem it a coup, another kismet, another ironic, another auspicious. A coup signified chaos, kismet signified fate, irony signified order, auspicious signified faith. Meanwhile, odds were quantifiable but chances were not. Chances were abstract and 'for' whereas odds were concrete and 'against'. Hopeful people used 'chances' in the same spots where skeptical people used 'odds'.

Love is the process of deciding on familiarity.

Doubt is healthy until it eclipses knowledge.