Cover Story
A Novel
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Netflix’s Inventing Anna and Hulu’s The Dropout meets Catch Me If You Can in this captivating novel about an ambitious young woman who gets trapped in a charismatic con artist’s scam.
A Most Anticipated Book by Entertainment Weekly, Marie Claire, Parade, New York Post, Shondaland, E!, Fortune, PopSugar, and more!
“It’s exciting, it’s surprising, it’s satisfying, it’s darkly funny, and it will keep you guessing.”—Linda Holmes for Today.com
After a rough year at NYU, aspiring writer Lora Ricci is thrilled to land a summer internship at ELLE magazine where she meets Cat Wolff, contributing editor and enigmatic daughter of a clean-energy mogul. Cat takes Lora under her wing, soliciting her help with side projects and encouraging her writing.
As a friendship emerges between the two women, Lora opens up to Cat about her financial struggles and lost scholarship. Cat’s solution: Drop out of NYU and become her ghostwriter. Lora agrees and, when the internship ends, she moves into Cat’s suite at the opulent Plaza Hotel. Writing during the day and accompanying Cat to extravagant parties at night, Lora’s life quickly shifts from looming nightmare to dream-come-true. But as Lora is drawn into Cat’s glamorous lifestyle, Cat’s perfect exterior cracks, exposing an illicit, shady world.
A whip-smart and delightfully inventive writer, Susan Rigetti brilliantly pieces together a perceptive, humorous caper full of sharp observations about scam culture. Composed of diary entries, emails, FBI correspondence, and more, Cover Story is a fresh, fun, and wholly original novel that takes readers deep into the codependency and deceit found in a relationship built on power imbalance and lies.
“[A] page-turner that’s hilarious in its dedication to vamping on viral news stories about real-life strivers and cons from Delvey to Instagram personality Caroline Calloway … a delicious read.”—TIME magazine
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rigetti (the memoir Whistleblower, as Susan Fowler) makes her fiction debut with a cinematic if implausible caper. Lora Ricci has pulled herself up by the bootstraps from a working-class Pennsylvania childhood through community college to NYU and a summer internship at Elle magazine. But unbeknownst to her parents and her fellow interns, Lora's practically flunking out of college and has lost her scholarship. So when Cat, a charismatic and glamorous contributing editor, spots Lora's writing talent and offers her a job as ghostwriter for stories sure to earn Cat "literary fame and fortune," Lora jumps at the opportunity to escape her troubles. And she escapes them in style, moving in to Cat's apartment at the Plaza Hotel and ordering room service daily. If the details about Cat's life don't quite add up (how can Cat afford the Plaza suite on a meager part-time salary?), Lora's more than happy to look the other way—until she's forced to realize that she's been played. Rigetti's propulsive narrative, which includes Instagram posts, text messages, and FBI case files, keeps the pages turning, and there's a juicy twist. Lora's character, however, is underdeveloped, and it's mystifying whether she's willfully clueless or simply naive. The overall success of this depends on whether readers are as adept at Lora at suspending disbelief.
Customer Reviews
What a great read ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fast and jaw dropping, highly recommend…there’s a twist at the end you won’t see coming!
Great entertainment
4.5 stars
Author
American. (neé Fowler) Physics graduate, former Silicon Valley software engineer, former technology op-ed editor at The New York Times. After writing a now-infamous 2017 blog post ("Silence Breakers”) about her experience as an engineer at Uber, she was named person of the year by TIME and The Financial Times, appeared on numerous magazine covers, and was awarded a Webby for Person of the Year in 2018. Now a freelance features writer and screenwriter. This is her first novel. Plot
Lora Ricci, an A-student from a working class family in suburban Pennsylvania, aspires to be a writer. She wins a scholarship to NYU, where she discovers she isn’t so smart after all, although one suspects lack of application might also have had something to do with why she lost her scholarship. She hasn’t told her parents yet. She’s got a summer internship at Elle magazine. All she has to do is impress them and her career as a writer is assured. Our gal tries her best, does reasonably well, but falls under the spell of a glamorous female consulting editor with a European accent named Cat Wolff, who lives in a suite at the Plaza Hotel that her super-rich Dad in Europe pays for. If you think this sounds like a mashup of Devil Wears Prada and Inventing Anna, you’re halfway there. Add The Dropout, Who is Maud Dixon? (A 2021 novel by Alexandra Andrews), and Catch Me If You Can (the movie staring Leonardo, not the song by the Dave Clark Five) and a couple of others into the mix as well. Twists and turns aplenty, some of which were telegraphed, but the twist in the tail is a gem.
Writing
“Mixed-media” approach featuring diary entries by our gal, FBI reports and secure messaging, tweets, IMs, some third person narrative, you name it. Witty social commentary that’s laugh-out-loud funny at times. Brisk pace throughout. Tesla-like acceleration at the end.
Bottom line
Great entertainment. Derivative as hell and proud of it. I finished it in three hours and eagerly await Ms R’s next offering.