The Likeness is a claustrophobic, intense, thrilling book, with carefully crafted characters luring you in - I have, for a few days of reading this book, wished hard for a chance to live with them, touch them affectionately, embroider with Abby and feel Daniel's warm, large hand on my head or neck. 
 When I say it is claustrophobic and intense, I mean that, at times, I had difficulty breathing from how enthralled I was in the story, and that when I turned the last page, sitting on a metro train, I was holding my breath. 
 As others have said, there are many similarities with The Secret History by Donna Tartt, yes: the group of young, academia-focused students: the large, intelligent, imposing one and the girl, the gay one and the fair one who sometimes uses him . Then the outsider, of course, entering this magical tight-knit group of people who don't open up to anybody else except each other. And, of course, the murder. For all the similarities, this is a very different book, one that takes a completely different point of view (as much as Cassie, like Richard Papen, often wants to melt inside the group and belong there), and a book that is interested in vastly different things than The Secret History is; I will only say that, looking at the parallels, outside of the obvious Henry Winter-Daniel March one, I might love Abby Stone more than Camilla Macaulay - not for any fault of Camilla's, whom we can only ever see through Richard's unreliable, male eyes. 
 Recommended to anybody who loves thrillers, and can be read without having read the first one (In the Woods), although it helps when Cassie references her backstory with Rob.