Impersonation was such a unique and insightful book. The story follows Allie, a single mother, who happens to be a ghostwriter for celebrities and politicians. Lana, an attorney is her newest client. She wants to write a book about raising boys to be feminist's. Lana does not provide much insight into the topic, Allie then finds herself using her personal experiences to write about this topic. Not being able to disclose that she is the person behind writing these books leaves her with a sense of void. When does Allie get to share that she is the one behind the writing? And will that make her feel professionally fulfilled?

The novel takes places during the 2016 Presidential elections, which was a unique revisit to that time. This is a character driven novel that follows her struggles to be enough for her son, herself, her clients and having a sense of fulfillment with her job.

Overall, I enjoyed the storyline, but there could have been less social issues and only focused on a couple. This would have made the story more compelling.

Impersonation was just not for me. I think I was too distracted while trying to read this and that really took away from the story.

Real Quick, we meet Allie, a ghost writer, and a single mom. She is going through it professionally and personally, and I wished that she wasn't such a downer of a character. I kept feeling bad for her, Even though this book dives into a lot of relevant topics, the characters were hard for me to like, Allie settles for what she doesn't deserve and her boyfriend is an idiot, and I feel like she complains so much. But whats great is how professionally as a ghostwriter she is able to adapt and create stories form simple ideas from the people she is working for, I find that to be amazing.

To begin with, I enjoyed Allie’s character and the various emotions she went through. On one side, she has regrets about the different life choices she made. On the other hand, she has to ghostwrite a story for someone who doesn’t give her much information. The author adds in many details about Allie’s life and the people she interacts with, and it made me connect with her. There are also supporting characters like her mother, Kurt, Jimmy, and Cass, who impact her choices. I particularly enjoyed the scenes between Jimmy and Allie and the unique friendship they had.

Moreover, the author provides details about the ghostwriting industry, which I found fascinating. I had limited knowledge about the process and found it interesting. The author also touches on other topics like feminism and motherhood, mainly when Allie works with Lana. The dynamic that the two shares are attractive because you see similarities in both of them, even if they have difficulty agreeing. On a side note, I also liked the scenes where they meet Ellen.

However, while I liked the story, I felt that there were quite a few unnecessary details that lagged the plot. The author meanders from the story quite a bit, especially with other characters, for instance, Norton and Gloria. While the story started strong and ended in an exciting climax, I felt it strayed in the middle.

But, apart from that, I found this story to be unique and different from other novels. Overall, “Impersonation” is pleasant contemporary women’s fiction.

Impersonation is to ghostwriting and feminism what Black Buck is to sales and consumerism. Both of these books make you equally thrilled and angry. You will love and hate Allie and Lana the same way you loved and hated Darren and Rhett.

Allie is a freelance ghostwriter, she is stuck having to balance her own mediocre "must make ends meet" world with the worlds of her fabulous subjects. She's a woman who had her own dreams and is having to balance the reality of how life turned out. So as someone who is not a mother, a freelancer or someone who would particularly call myself feminist, I was reading this book as a window into those things. And of course for the humor. To be honest, I’m connecting slightly better with her monster of a client, Lana than I am Allie, the protagonist. But then again, I’m a career first professional woman and Allie is anything but.

The writing is sharp and I’m easily driven from page to page. There's lots of liberal messaging so be prepared for that, regardless of which side you are on, it is easy to find humor in the austerity of it.

Allie Lang has been a ghostwriter for years on top of being a single mom. While in the middle of ghostwriting a novel for someone, some legal things come to light on his end and the book is cancelled. Allie had already planned where the money from this book was going to go: she found a new house perfect for her and her son Cass and she was finally going to take Cass to Disney World. Unable to get a refund on their trip she takes Cass to Disney anyways, leaving her with even less money.

Allie gets hired to write Lana Breban’s, feminist lawyer and activist, memoir. Allie is excited to finally have another job and be able to replenish some of the money she lost on the last book, but Lana offers very little making it extremely hard for Allie. Allie just wants to get by as a single mother and provide a good life for her son.

There were equal amounts of things I liked and disliked in this book I think. I grew up in a single mom household, so I understood the struggle of just trying to make it. I disliked that Allie didn’t stand up for herself and demand what she deserved.

There were a lot of topics covered in this book: feminism, politics, motherhood, etc. I think the main topic was what it’s like being a single mother parenting a kind and the different ways of doing it.

Thank you, Algonquin Books and Netgalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Set in the early days of the Trump presidency and the rise of #MeToo movement, Impersonation explores the intersection between what women are willing to accept and what they need and must learn to demand for themselves.

Allie Lang is the forty-year old single mother of five-year-old Cassie. Her writing career was sidelined back in Dartmouth when she resisted her advisor’s advances. She later left a good job to help her mother care for her ailing step-dad. Now, she cobbles together an income by substitute teaching, landscape work, and ghostwriting memoirs for celebrities of all calibers.

Al has a live-in boyfriend who is a great guy and a wonderful male role model for Cassie. But, he is also a recovering capitalist whose divorce spurred him to seek a more meaningful life. Between odd jobs, he travels across country. Al is afraid to demand more of his time, knowing he needs to find himself. She also resists becoming dependent on any one.

When a lucrative book deal falls through after the celebrity is named in the #MeToo movement, Al is given the job of writing a memoir about motherhood for a nationally known feminist. It should be a dream job, especially after the smarmy stories the last guy wanted to tell her. Except, Al can’t get Lana to talk about her life and has to, well, basically, make up stories.

Al struggles with the basic needs of putting a roof over their heads and raising a son and dealing with her parents and here-and-gone again lover. And, of course, trying to pin down her celebrity so she can finish the book and get paid.

The purpose of the memoir becomes apparent as Lana decides for a political career. Al’s purpose is to make an intelligent, powerful feminist appealing to Middle-American women–an anti-Hillary. As Al impersonates Lana, in the memoir Lana is impersonating the typical American mother and housewife. Al has not recourse but to plumb her own life for insights and stories.

The lesson Al must learn is that being independent does not mean a woman can’t ask for what she needs, like a better salary and a committed relationship and help in juggling job and motherhood.

I was pleased with the competent writing, the humor that had me laughing out loud, and the realistic portrayal of motherhood. Al works from home, and the challenges will resonate with many women who had to work from home with kids in the house during the pandemic. Best of all, Al is a mirror to the many ways women are more worried about taking care of other people than we are ourselves. When Al empowers herself, a happy ending ensues and she and Lana become a powerful team.

I received a free galley through NetGalley from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.

Started off strong but kinda fell off for me. This book was graciously provided by the publisher via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I thought the premise was really interesting: Allie is a single mom who is struggling to make ends meet as a celebrity ghost writer. When she is hired to pen a book for a famous feminist icon named Lana, she’s really excited. But it turns out that Lana lives a very elite feminist lifestyle and she gives Allie very few personal stories to use as content for the book... so few in fact that Allie ends up drawing from her own past to fill in the gaps, fabricating a whole life for Lana that fits the image Lana wants to portray, but not actual reality.

I found Allie and Lana’s work relationship to be a bit confusing - and Allie makes decisions as a professional I wouldn’t have agreed to personally, but you can understand why she did it. It was an entertaining read and definitely made me think - it would be a fun one for a book club to dissect.

I was fascinated by the premise of a ghostwriter and Allie Lang is the go-to for those looking for help writing their book. It’s here where she is hired to write Lana Brennan’s memoir.

Overall I enjoyed this story and thought the message behind being accepted no matter the ways to patent.

*many thanks to Algonquin for the gifted copy. All opinions are my own

I don't often read contemporary fiction (thrillers and mysteries are more of the genre I read), but I was happy to receive a copy of Impersonation. Allie Lang is a professional ghostwriter who lands her dream job writing a memoir for Lana Breban, a lawyer and women's rights advocate with aspirations for political office. Allie soon realizes that this isn't quite the job that she thought it was.

I enjoyed learning more about the ghostwriting trade and that it was set in a place I was familiar with. I also like seeing the differences as well as parallels between the two women - especially with respect to their parenting styles. At times, the pacing was a little slow for me - probably because I'm used to so many fast paced thrillers.

This book touches on many current issues, which makes it relevant. The characters are not particularly intriguing and the story moved rather slowly. Not one of my favorite books of 2020, but still worth reading.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to like this book more. I love the plot, I like the storyline, the setting is timely, and the situations are relatable--almost. Honestly, I am a reader, but I kept wanting to watch this--a strange feeling for me. Although I didn't love the book, I think it could be a good film.

Allie ghostwrites memoirs and novels for the quite famous. After her latest project, a well-paying memoir for a sleazy TV producer falls through when it’s revealed he’s sexually assaulted women in his office, Allie’s finances become worryingly stretched. When the opportunity arises she write a “mom-moir” about Lana Breban, a prominent feminist who wants to run for political office but needs her image softening up a little, Allie is thrilled. But Lena gives her so little information about herself and her family, Allie starts to draw from her own life.

I found Allie’s living situation quite stressful: she can barely afford her rent, she has to leave Cass her young son, with an elderly neighbor, and she’s never quite sure of the status of her relationship with her live-in boyfriend Kurt. I found Allie a bit of a limp lettuce leaf - she allows things to happen, she doesn’t stand up for herself, and she has trouble expressing what she wants - and this passivity just grates. She is a single parent and I found her son rather irritatingly whiny. I appreciate he’s not a typical boy or even a typical kid, but like his mother he is very passive and appears to make little effort to make his own life more enjoyable. Quite why easygoing and caring Kurt wants to be part of this family is unclear to me.

One part that did ring true for me is Allie’s mother competitive relationship with her friend Patty. That this leads to catastrophe for Allie has an inevitability to it that works to drive the plot along.

I feel a bit harsh judging the characters like this, but it made the book a bit of a drag to read. Allie’s inability to deal with what life has given her, her lack of gumption to make things better, even her wishy washiness with Kurt just make her a drag. I’m honestly surprised that Lana would actually try and help her and, of course, Allie is a bit lame about that too.

Ghostwriters are such a well-worn plot device and metaphor and I thought this was going to have an interesting twist on that, but i just found Impersonation to be a book that I couldn’t wait to finish for all the wrong reasons.

Thanks to Algonquin Books and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

Impersonation follows Allie Lang, a single mother from Western Massachusetts who works as a ghostwriter. Going into this book, I had an understanding of ghostwriting as the practice of celebrities and other public figures hiring a professional writer to write their books for them in their first-person voice, only for the writer to go uncredited. Allie’s work in Impersonation involves all that, of course, but it also goes deeper into the nuances surrounding the practice. Allie works with a lawyer named Lana who wants to write a memoir about motherhood in order to soften her public image. This is where some great commentary about modern sexism comes in. Just the fact that Lana feels compelled to appear heartfelt to the public eye, to avoid being seen as too angry, too ambitious, too bossy, is really telling. Allie doesn’t seem to benefit from Lana’s particular brand of feminism, though–she is struggling in her personal life in ways that Lana will never understand.

Pitlor also critiques the tendency of women to be way too accommodating, as well as the systems that promote that mindset. Throughout Impersonation, Allie appears to allow other people to walk all over her. As much as I want to believe that I’m a strong woman who isn’t submissive, as much as I wanted to be annoyed at Allie’s complacency, I get it because I also sometimes allow myself to be walked all over. She allows herself to be critiqued by Lana instead of demanding material from her, and honestly, what woman has never had no choice but to sit there as they are unfairly criticized? Regardless of whether or not you’re a mother, and regardless of which profession you’re in, I think that a lot of career women will see themselves in Impersonation (also, as a Bostonian, I loved all of the Massachusetts references).

This was such an intriguing story. I was at first drawn in because I was so fascinated by Allie’s ghostwriting and seeing what that writing process was like.

This was also a complex story encompassing relationships, politics, parenting, and feminism. While Allie was raising her son as a single parent, at times depending on friends and neighbours to help look after him, Lana was making speeches and getting media attention for her bold feminism and policies purported to help mothers, like Allie. Yet as the work on the book progressed, it became more and more clear to me that Allie was not getting any helpful, informative input from Lana, and she began to include parts of her own life in her sample chapters.

One aspect of the book that really made an impression on me was the difference between the resources available to Allie and to Lana as parents. This quote from the author Heidi Pitlor, taken from the press release provided by the publisher, really illustrates it for me:

“When I was first an acquiring editor and later a part-time freelance editor with young twins and a teacher husband, things got pretty tight for us. I found myself shuttling between some fabulous work lunch at the Four Seasons with a well-known writer and a dinner of Kraft mac n’ cheese with my family. Twin diapers and daycare do not come cheap. When some more financially comfortable friend mentioned an upcoming eco-conscious vacation or their locally made toys, I grew frankly jealous, well aware that this was a first-world trouble. Still, I began to wonder if living according to certain ideals was only possible for the economically privileged.”

The last line of that quote, in particular, gets at something that I was thinking about while reading this book but couldn’t quite put into words. For example, I was uncomfortable and frustrated that Allie was struggling to find safe and affordable childcare while Lana appeared to have full-time, live-in help – and Lana was the one who’s name would be on the book about motherhood, a book which seemed more and more to be taking the shape of Allie’s memories and stories.

This feeling of disconnect between Allie and Lana took hold early on for me and the more Allie drew on her own experiences while writing the book, the more nervous I became, because I was certain that things were somehow going to come to a head. I was so tense leading up to the end!

But there are no easy answers or tidy solutions in this book, which was both frustrating and real. And given the current political climate, I think this was an especially timely, thought-provoking read.

My mind has wandered back to Impersonation several times since I finished. Recommended.

Impersonation by Heidi Pitlor follows Allie, a single, working-class mother ghostwriter as she inhabits the world of her subject, a high-profile, powerhouse women's rights attorney. Allie quickly learns that she has to give more of her story for this book than any other job before and her life gets significantly more complicated. ⁣
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Written on the eve of the 2016 election and the MeToo movement, Impersonation deals with feminism, motherhood, class, and ambition in a really clever nuanced way. ⁣
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I really enjoyed this book. The story was different from any other book I've read. We get a really cool look into what ghostwriting is like (what a cool and weird job!!). I loved how Pitlor wrote about large issues and then showed the impact of them in her characters' lives. It was interesting to read a book about the 2016 election and the mayhem that followed through the lens of this character. And also reminded me that the fight against hatred works when you fight it together. ⁣
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The book gave me a lot to think about which I always LOVE! Pitlor's writing is funny and fast paced. I'm definitely going to check out her other books! ⁣
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I recommend this one!! It came out August 18, so check it out! ⁣
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Thanks so much to @algonquinbooks for giving me a copy in exchange for my honest review. ⁣

I was excited by the premise of this book - the story of a single mother who earns a living as a ghostwriter. I'm trying to identify what didn't work for me about this book.

I feel like I had mentally checked out from the story by the time I was less than a quarter of the way through. Reading it felt like a chore and I found myself wishing it was over each time I picked it up. Most of the stories and the characters didn't grab me, and I'm not sure it needed to be as long as it was. I think the book maybe tried to do too much? It commented on motherhood, childcare, the lack of support and respect for mothers in the US, especially single mothers, feminism, sexism, #MeToo, the 2016 election. It very much feels like a novel that is trying to capture the American zeitgeist post-2016. All of this sounds like something I should love reading, and yet I didn't.

There were several really funny parts to the story, and I appreciated the last third of the book more than the rest of it, perhaps because the tension between Lana and Ali finally came to a head and somewhat paid off/held my attention.

I appreciated that the narrative focused on an "imperfect" mother (I thought Ali was a good mother, if a flawed human, just like everyone else. She clearly loves her child. It's the system that makes motherhood more difficult and at times nearly impossible). I think so many people, including most readers if true, hate imperfect mothers. Mothers are one of the most hated on groups I can think of, despite America's purported worship of them. I can imagine readers having automatic disdain for Ali right off the bat because of that, which I think is interesting. It's a risk any author knowingly makes if they're going to write a mother as a full fledged human being, and one I respect.

Ultimately, for whatever reason, this book just never clicked or came together for me as I hoped.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Algonquin Books for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I would usually be slower to read a character-driven book. Surprisingly, not this one. Allie Lang, the main character in this story, got my attention right away. Her struggles being a single mom and ghostwriter gave me the energy to continue following her path. She is an independent, stubborn, feminist character. "Impersonation" is a story about a mom in survival mode trying to make it in a man's world.

I liked Allie's ending (I don't want to spoil more on this). I was able to watch her develop to be a better person as a mom, a lover, and a working woman. Heidi Pitlor put together all the prominent problems that women generally encounter in one story -- sexual harassment, motherhood, mom-shaming, politics, feminism, salary negotiation, to name a few. It was quirky, lovely, and fun.

Impersonation is a book that will make you feel. It may make you feel angry,b as the book tackles complex issues of privilege and class, but it will make you feel. It's a feminist novel with an edge, as single mom Allie finds herself ghostwriting for hey Missy difficult subject yet - the critical lawyer, Lana.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.