While reading the prior three novels in this series, I found myself feeling a strong dislike to willful, rude Lila and leaning heavily towards the more agreeable, more hard-working Elena. I felt like I was more like Elena, bright but not brilliant (just recently a friend actually called me "brilliant," as Lila refers to Elena), dependable (mostly), uncertain about her own abilities and nervous about speaking up. But as I finished the fourth novel, I noted Lila's shifting passions, the ease with which she learns new things, her moodiness, the way she manipulates and strikes out at those who love her, the way she sabotages herself and views those who respect her with contempt, and I started getting the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps I'm more like Lila than I like to admit. I'm not as organized as she seems to be, not as strategic, and I'm certainly not as tied to location as she is, but I think back to the scenes where she's jumped into learning about different educational techniques and is applying them to parenting her son and I remember the zeal with which I consumed tons of parenting theory as I taught my children how to sign as infants and how to read as toddlers and made my choices around homeschooling, and it felt uncomfortably familiar. 
 Although I have, on occasion, been accused of being manipulative and/or cold, as Lila is accused in the novels, I don't see myself as mean as Lila seems to be, but I only know the story from Elena's perspective. How would Lila write about herself? How would Elena write about me if I were her friend? 
 I've never had a friendship as close as Elena and Lila's. They are closer, in many ways, than sisters. There were times while reading the books that I started to wonder if perhaps the two characters were really two sides of the same person, they were so close to one another. 
 I also wonder if, perhaps, the two women embody both the good and bad in the nature of Naples itself, much as I found that the girls in Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides personify the decline of the city of Detroit. But I don't know enough about Naples to know if this is the case. 
 I put off reading these novels because the covers look so cheesy, but I'm glad that Lauren convinced me to give them a try. There are so many layers to these novels that I found them very satisfying to read.