Sex and Vanity revolves around a girl named Lucie who travels to Capri for her good friend’s wedding where she meets George. From their first meeting Lucie decides she doesn’t like him but gradually she is drawn closer to him as the festivities continues and eventually they are involved in a tryst that could damage her families reputation.
Lucie I am kind of in two minds about. I sympathise with her in regards to the casual racism and subtle ostracism she feels from her father’s side of the family but I can’t relate to her at all because of her wealth. She can definitely be likeable at times but she just doesn’t stand up for herself enough. I wanted her to call out her grandmother and her cousins about what they have been doing to her for all these years but she just takes it all out on Christine. And then petulantly running that smear campaign against Rosemary who has been nothing but nice to her was just unnecessary, though I am glad she got called out for it.
We honestly don’t find out enough about George. I wish we got a few chapters from his perspective or just even what he has been up to. His background is alluded to but we don’t really get any concrete facts about him or his personality. The relationship between him and Lucie is kind of lacking depth as well. We get a nice introduction at the start of the book and the foundations are laid but they just didn’t have enough scenes together for me to really be convinced.
There were just a little too many conversations throughout revolving around all of the connections and various famous people that they know. I found myself skimming through a lot of those sections because I wasn’t all that interested in reading all these different random names and titles all the time. If the narrative would have focused more on the actual characters and the relationship at the core of the story and not just name dropping all the time I felt like I maybe would have enjoyed it a lot more.
⭐️2/5 stars A little shallow…
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