Cover story A novel

Susan Rigetti

Book - 2022

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 desperate 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 a...s 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.--

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FICTION/Rigetti, Susan
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Subjects
Genres
Epistolary fiction
Published
New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Susan Rigetti (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
354 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780063072053
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Journalist Rigetti's debut kicks off beach-read season with a bang. Composed of email transcripts, FBI documents, Instagram posts, and diary entries, the novel primarily focuses on NYU student Lora--an intern at Elle magazine who is desperate to jumpstart her career--and her relationship with Cat Wolff, an Elle editor and big-spending socialite. Cat lures Lora into her world, convincing her to drop out and become her ghost writer for a potential novel and moving her into a spare room in a Plaza Hotel suite. While Lora writes off Cat's idiosyncrasies as the strange behavior of the obscenely wealthy, readers learn early on that there is no Cat Wolff, it's just one of an ever-growing string of aliases and stolen identities of a Russian con artist looking for her big score. Drawing heavy inspiration from the true story of Anna Delvey, who conned New York's elite for several years in the mid-2010s, this book will be a must-read for the legions who followed Delvey's story with bated breath. While Lora's character at times seems too naive to be believed, readers will love the plot, which twists until the very last page. It's The Devil Wears Prada meets Gone Girl, and it's delightful.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

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. Agent: Liz Parker, Verve. (Apr.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

As Susan Fowler, Rigetti authored the acclaimed memoir Whistleblower and was subsequently named 2017 Time Person of the Year as one of "The Silence Breakers" whose actions helped launch #MeToo. Here she turns to fiction with the story of an aspiring young writer ensnared by someone who at first looks to be a mentor. During a summer internship at ELLE, struggling NYU student Lora Ricci meets the charismatic Cat Wolff, who persuades her to drop out of school and work as her ghostwriter. Lora is at first dazzled by Cat's glamorous lifestyle, but eventually Cat's shady side emerges. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An unsophisticated intern at a fashion magazine fears her new, wealthy mentor may be a con artist. Rigetti's entertaining first novel lays out how easily a grifter can take advantage of the system--and the naïve. And no one seems to be a better target for a con artist than unsophisticated would-be writer Lora Ricci from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Lora has just started an internship at glamorous Elle magazine in Manhattan, but she feels overwhelmed. She has failed her courses at NYU and is hiding her lost scholarship from her parents, and she knows she's at a disadvantage compared to the other trust fund--fueled interns around her. Then she meets charismatic contributing editor Cat Wolff, heiress to an Austrian billionaire's fortune, who offers her an opportunity that seems too good to be true. She invites Lora to move into her huge suite at the Plaza Hotel so that Lora can ghostwrite short stories for her, a plan that will surely catapult them to a lucrative literary contract. A savvier writer might balk at such a ridiculous suggestion--trying to climb the literary ladder is hardly the best way to access instant wealth--but the plan sounds plausible to the increasingly desperate Lora, who doesn't know what to do when her internship ends. Meanwhile, readers know something that Lora does not: Rigetti reveals from the start of this clever, fast-paced book that Cat is not all that she seems. The novel's opening pages consist of an FBI transcript, and Rigetti tells the story using a variety of ephemera--journal entries, Instagram posts, texts--to heighten the mystery as Lora begins to question Cat's motives and actions. This isn't a book to take too seriously, but the crafty Rigetti makes fraud a lot of fun. An entertaining shell game of a novel. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.