The Fiction Writer
A Novel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
“Juicy, suspenseful, and irresistible.”– Nina de Gramont, New York Times Bestselling author of The Christie Affair
"Sultry and mesmerizing…" – Katy Hays, New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters
From the USA Today-bestselling author of Beautiful Little Fools, Jillian Cantor's The Fiction Writer follows a writer hired by a handsome billionaire to write about his family history with Daphne du Maurier and finds herself drawn into a tangled web of obsession, marital secrets, and stolen manuscripts.
The once-rising literary star Olivia Fitzgerald is down on her luck. Her most recent novel—a retelling of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca—was a flop, her boyfriend of nine years just dumped her and she’s battling a bad case of writer’s block. So when her agent calls her with a high-paying ghostwriting opportunity, Olivia is all too willing to sign the NDA.
At first, the write-for-hire job seems too good to be true. All she has to do is interview Henry “Ash” Asherwood, a reclusive mega billionaire, twice named People’s Sexiest Man Alive, who wants her help in writing a book that reveals a shocking secret about his late grandmother and Daphne du Maurier. But when Olivia arrives at his Malibu estate, nothing is as it seems. The more Olivia digs into his grandmother’s past, the more questions she has—and before she knows it, she’s trapped in a gothic mystery of her own.
With as many twists and turns as the California coast, The Fiction Writer is a page-turner that explores the boundaries of creative freedom and whose stories we have the right to tell.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This muddled suspense outing from Cantor (Half Life) opens strong before becoming mired in its metatextual references to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Struggling novelist Olivia Fitzgerald is hired to ghostwrite a novel for "reclusive mega-billionaire" Henry Asherwood, whose wife died in a tragic (and suspicious) accident a year earlier. Asherwood hires Olivia based on her most recent novel, Becky, a rework of Rebecca, telling her that du Maurier "stole his grandmother's story" and that he wants Olivia to write a novel inspired by a more direct and honest account of the late woman's life. The more she works on the project, the stranger Asherwood begins to act, stoking Olivia's suspicions about the fate of his late wife and, eventually, her own safety. Thus, Olivia "step inside my own personal retelling of Rebecca" while writing about the original book's development. Though Cantor is a strong stylist, her ultra-meta conceit quickly becomes too complicated, stalling narrative momentum with extended passages from Olivia's in-progress novel and sacrificing suspense for cleverness one too many times. This ambitious gothic experiment misses the mark.
