Emily Beyda

DNF around the 80 page mark.
For a book the promises echoes of Hitchcock this was SO DRY. The writing style lacks creativity, the main characters are uninteresting, and the dialogue and inner thoughts are incredibly stilted. Although the premise sounds really cool, about 50 pages in I was convinced I had a really good idea of what was going on. Since I was already ready to DNF I checked other reviews and my guess was spot on, plus I saw so many others also thinking this was, well, boring. I hate to use the word, but truly it's what I was feeling with this book. I cannot image having wasted my time reading 300 pages of this uninspired and poorly written story.… (mehr)

She's working in a run-down mall movie theater when a man appears and hires her to work a the body double for a celebrity who has disappeared from the public eye due to a breakdown. It's a lot of money and the unnamed narrator accepts the job, shedding her own identity to become adept at impersonating the celebrity. As she slowly takes on more public appearances, the risk of discovery become higher and her own sense of who she is begins to shift. But both she and the man who hired her are keeping secrets that might just be bigger than the deception they're pulling on the public and those who knew the celebrity.

Emily Beyda's novel begins strong, spins its wheels in the middle and then finishes with a lot less than is foreshadowed throughout the story. There was a lot of promise in the first chapters and the potential for so many exciting things to happen, which were all bypassed in favor of sitting around in an empty apartment and the gentlest of ending.… (mehr)

The story sounded intriguing. A young girl with a real likeness to a celebrity is hired to become her body double. Rosanna Feld has disappeared from society and is rumored to have had a breakdown. She is hired by Max who keeps her hidden in an apartment to learn everything about Rosanna.
I found the story a bit slow paced. It was hard to like any of the characters or feel real sympathy for them. The body double is in a very strange situation with no one from her past life to rely on and no one in Rosanna's life that seemed to really know her either. It was an ok read, just a bit too depressing. I received an ebook from the publisher in exchange for a review.… (mehr)