The Body Double by Emily Beyda | Expected publication: March 3rd 2020 by Doubleday Books | 304 Pages | Goodreads
✅ REVIEW
A girl is hired to serve as a celebrity’s double in the public eye. And a girl has no name.
She is taken to LA, trained to become Rosanna (the celebrity) and eventually starts making public appearances as her. The book is narrated from the point of view of the nameless double and it is slow paced.
The novel does not have a lot of dialogue and, at times, there were 4-5 pages describing the thoughts of the nameless narrator, a lot of instropetion, and not much interaction with other characters or events to advance the plot.
You might be able to predict what is going on here at the beginning of the novel, it is not hard to figure it out. Overall, it was ok.
ARC provided by Publisher via Netgalley
✅ PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION
“A dark, glittering debut novel, The Body Double is the suspenseful story of a young woman who is recruited by a stranger to give up her old life and identity to impersonate a reclusive Hollywood star.
A strange man discovers our nameless narrator selling popcorn at a decrepit small-town movie theater and offers her an odd and lucrative position: she will forget her job, her acquaintances, even her name, and move to Los Angeles, where she will become the body double of the famous and troubled celebrity Rosanna Feld.
A nervous breakdown has forced Rosanna out of the public eye, and she needs a look-alike to take her place in the tabloid media circus of Hollywood. Overseen by Max, who hired her for the job, our narrator spends her days locked up in a small apartment in the hills watching hidden camera footage of Rosanna, wearing Rosanna’s clothes, eating the food Rosanna likes, practicing her mannerisms, learning to become Rosanna in every way.
But as she makes her public debut as Rosanna, dining at elegant restaurants, shopping in stylish boutiques, and finally risking a dinner party with Rosanna’s true inner circle, alarming questions begin to arise. What really caused Rosanna’s mental collapse? Will she ever return? And is Max truly her ally, or something more sinister? With echoes of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, The Body Double is a fabulously plotted noir about fame, beauty, and the darkness of Hollywood”
✅ BOOK SOURCE AND FORMAT
Arc, eBook