A gripping tale of romance, intrigue and deadly secrets – for fans of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Colleen Hoover’s Verity and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
Once-rising literary star Olivia Fitzgerald is in a downward spiral. After her second novel, a retelling of Rebecca, fails, her third novel can’t find a publisher. And Olivia’s boyfriend breaking up with her hasn’t helped her creativity much either. Broke, newly single and struggling to write another book, she jumps at the chance for a high-paying ghostwriting job when her agent calls with the opportunity.
It almost seems too good to be true: all she has to do is spend a few weeks in Malibu interviewing Henry ‘Ash’ Asherwood, a recently widowed billionaire recluse, who wants her to write a book about a stunning family secret involving his grandmother and Daphne du Maurier.
But when she arrives at his Malibu estate, nothing is what it seems. For one thing, Ash is strangely reluctant to truly share his family secrets with Olivia, and she keeps catching him in lies. For another, he seems more interested in her than their writing project – though is that really such a bad thing? And when she discovers a more recent secret, Olivia finds herself caught up in a gothic mystery of her own.
Can she rewrite the past to reveal the deadly truth?
Jillian Cantor is the USA Today and internationally bestselling author of eleven novels for teens and adults, including, most recently, Beautiful Little Fools, where she reimagines F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, telling the story from the perspective of the women. The novel is cleverly reframed as a detective narrative… and one of the women pulled the trigger.
With The Fiction Writer, Cantor once again uses a classic novel and gives it a fresh twist. This time, the story is contemporary, and the protagonist, Olivia, is extremely relatable – particularly for any writers out there. Olivia’s last novel, a retelling of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, bombed, only selling about 1000 copies. One of those copies wound up in the hands of billionaire, and sexiest man alive, Henry Asherwood, and now he’s flying Olivia to Los Angeles to meet with him.
I had no idea where this story was going, which is strange. Generally, I can spot a plot twist at a distance. But with its gothic feel, Cantor builds the tension until it feels downright sinister. There’s a bit of romance, themes around plagiarism and story, and some clever use of the original story itself, Rebecca. In fact, there are multiple stories within the story here, which I can’t write about without giving plot twists away, but needless to say it’s highly unusual and makes this addictive reading. This is a great read for the summer season, particularly if you’re looking for something a little different.
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