Publisher: Doubleday Books
Release Date: 3/3/2020
The blurb for this book was intriguing. The actual book fell short.
We have a young woman working a dead end job at a movie theater. She's approached by a wealthy but mysterious stranger. His proposition? With his guidance and training (and she finds out later, plastic surgery and starvation) she will impersonate Rosanna Feld, a starlet who needs a break from the limelight. Her period of employment will last three years and then she is to disappear into obscurity so Rosanna can resume her life. For some odd reason, the young woman jumps at the chance.
The wealthy man, named Max, whisks her to L.A. and puts her up in a shoddy, run down apartment. I don't know about anyone else but this would be a major red flag for me. Max is soon dressing her, instructing her, and even has a doctor come and do surgery on her. This all happens in the apartment. The major setting of this book is the apartment.
Other than a hairdresser and doctor, for a long period of time Max is the only person the nameless narrator sees. I'm no doctor but you can tell that she has the beginnings of Stockholm syndrome. She's like an infant that depends on Max for everything. Her daily life in the apartment is so boring that it's almost maddening to the reader.
Max decides that she's ready to be seen out in public to put her transformation to the test. This goes well and I started to think, okay, this book is about to start building up to something. Now it will finally get juicy.
It doesn't. Max controls who she sees, what she says, where she goes, what she eats. Then after her outings she goes back to the same crappy apartment. Her transformation is a success. People think she's Rosanna. Mentally, she thinks she is Rosanna.
Have I mentioned that we still haven't seen the actual Rosanna? Any guesses as to where she might be?
The characters are one dimensional. The nameless narrator may be a good idea, but this narrator only has tiny snippets of backstory. If you blink or skim, you will miss them. You don't care about her as a person at all. Ever. Not to mention you never have it explained to you why she would ever make such a drastic, life-altering decision in the first place.
The book trudges on and on and just when you think It will build to something exciting, it falls flat. The ending came and was not only confusing but it was as flat and monotone as the rest of the book.
Thank you to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book.
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