Cover Story
A Novel
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3.9 • 98 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
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
Entertaining
Great twist!