One of best books I've read in a long time - the hype is real. I've already recommended it to others and will label it as a perfect summer read.

Wow. Such a spellbinding book - I couldn't put it down!
Told through diary entries, emails, texts, some newsclippings, this book tells a story that is clearly alluding to the story of Anna Sorokin (from Inventing Anna and My Friend Anna fame) - but pushed to publishing and the fashion industry. Who doesn't love reading about a con artist - and in fiction there is the extra perk that you can have all the answers and twists that the real life story isn't as quick to provide.
The characters, plot, and epistolary take makes this a new take on the con artist trope. I was pulled in and the pace never let up and while we knew that it would all fall apart the how and aftermath were completely unexpected for me.
I was left with a couple of questions that the ending left (mostly how?) but nothing that I think detracts from the book. I think this could be the book of the summer - and would be great for book clubs.

Really enjoyed this one, especially on the heels of watching Inventing Anna. I kept waiting for a twist and as I neared the end and there was no twist I thought it was just fine but then. Yeah. *slow clap* You understood the assignment Ms. Rigetti. A+.

This was a fun book told through diary entries, text message, FBI reports, and news reports. Lori Ricci, a summer intern at ELLE magazine meets Cat Wolff, who lives at the Plaza Hotel. This is a quick read of scams and deceit with a interesting twist at the end. Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.

“I’ll let you in on one of life’s little secrets: most people are so caught up in their own internal worlds and so worried about their own problems, they rarely pay attention to anyone or anything else for very long.”

I have not seen Netflix’s Inventing Anna but from what I have heard about it this book is a lot like that. Crazy brilliant woman fools everyone into thinking she is a rich heiress, all the while she’s scamming the pants off of them.

This book was so fun and fast! It is written in the most unique style utilizing diary entries, social media posts, text messages, and emails. What a fresh and fun way to add a little something something to an already page turner of a story. It also has beauty closets, fashion houses, book publishers, makeup rooms, and a peek inside The Plaza Hotel and all that that entails. I was going to give it 4 1/2 stars but bumped this baby up to five once I finished. WOW! Brilliant. Add Cover Story to your summer tbr and make you sure you have some time to devote to it because you will have a hard time putting it down once you’ve started!

Thank you to Netgalley, Harper Collins Publishers, William Morrow, and the author for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book takes you on a wild ride of deceit, drama, high fashion and money. It centers around Lora Ricci who wants to be a writer and will do anything to get there. She is interning at Elle Magazine and meets "Cat Wolff" who takes her under her wing. Cat is an editor at the magazine and lives in a suite in the plaza where she leaves hundred dollars bills for all the wait staff. Lora quits her schooling and becomes friends and sort of business partners with Cat. As the story progresses; told in Lora's diary, instagram posts, FBI texts, and newspaper articles, you realize something is just not right. It seems that Lora has such a low opinion of herself. She leaves her family behind to be with Cat and help her write her big novel. You keep pulling for Lora to realize that she someone who is smart and could really manage on her own. I enjoyed the adventure and story of this book but let me tell you, the ending was a shocker. It leaves you with your jaw open and I still haven't lifted mine up.
Thanks to #WilliamMorrow, #netgalley & @susanthesquark for an ARC of this book

This epistolary binge-able novel was a fun read.

Lora Ricci, NYU dropout gets a dream internship at ELLE magazine. After doing menial tasks in the beauty closet, editor, Cat Wolff takes an interest in this young writer. This dazzling rich editor asks for Lora’s help ghostwriting some short stories guaranteeing Lora’s success after Cat gets her own. Lora even moves into Cat’s suite at The Plaza and they work tirelessly.

As time progresses, Lora grows suspicious of Cat’s motivation and starts to wonder who this secretive woman really is.

Who is Cat Wolffe really? Lora soon finds out that Cat is a con artist after the FBI becomes involved and nothing is as it seems. The reader gets plenty of insider information through FBI correspondences and bank transactions well before Lora has a clue.

I felt that Lora was too naïve and couldn’t quite fathom how she fell for it all, but the con mystery was intriguing and the twist at the end was unexpected.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harpercollins for an advanced E copy of this book for my honest review.

I didn't know what to expect with this book but I live for an epistolary novel. There is something about the idea you're getting a secret glimpse into someone's private life in their own words is captivating to me.

This book was written through FBI communications, diary entries, instagram posts, and emails. Lora Ricci is a young woman whose struggling. She has just lost her full ride to NYU after tanking her grades this semester, but she did manage to snag a coveted internship position with Elle magazine. While there, she's intrigued by a young glamorous editor, Cat Wolff. Cat is everything Lora wants to be, an editor and writer, rich, fashionable, successful. But she isn't all she appears to be, her father is rich and she's been living off his allowance, in fact he holds the purse strings rather tight when Cat steps out of line and he catches wind.

Lora gets caught up. She's starting to disconnect from friends and her parents, who have voiced their disaproval and distrust of Cat. But Lora doesn't heed their caution and jumps into a partnership with Cat.

What happens next I can't spoil for you but I will say the plot twist in this one took me totally by surprise. The excitement toward the end of the novel had me swiping through the ebook as fast as my eyes and fingers would allow it.

It was a slow start for me, but by the end I was thoroughly enjoying myself and the storyline.

I loved this book!

It was very "Inventing Anna" like from Netflix and I didn't know that going in but quickly realized. I loved that show so that was a good thing.

Lora is having issues at NYU and it's not working out for her.

Cat is the con woman to beat all con women!

She gets Lora to help her with "her short stories" and they're going to publish a book.

Meanwhile behind the scenes, the gov't is following Cat and watching everything she does.

Things finally unfold and her con comes to an end but this is really the beginning for Lora

She's no longer the ghost writer, she's known as the writer and finally gets published!

I just reviewed Cover Story by Susan Rigetti. #CoverStory #NetGalley

What an absolutely delicious summer read, full of references to NYC's celebrity con artists and literary drama. Told through diary entries, emails, DMs, and more, this is the perfect beach read that's guaranteed to throw you for a loop.

I love other people's drama; call it schadenfreude or nosiness, I'm desperate to know what's going on, particularly in worlds that I orbit as a satellite and never as a participant - namely, literary drama. This book is such a delightful mashup of so many recent pop culture dramedies: Anna Delvey, Cat Person, Bad Art Friend, Caroline Calloway, and more. Lora is a sweet girl from Nowhere, Pennsylvania who gets wrapped up into more than is dreamt of in her philosophy and suffers for it, and you can't help but to hang onto every word she writes into her diary.

This is such a fantastic beach read, light enough to pick up and put down, but intriguing enough to suck you in every time. Read with a glass of champagne or a good cocktail at hand, and be ready to want to shake Lora by her shoulders as though you're her older sister.

Thank you William Morrow and NetGalley for the ARC!

If you loved following Anna Sorokin's story, COVER STORY should be your next read. I read it in one sitting when I was going to Vermont from NYC, so it was about 4-5 hours. The way it's written was interesting, from diary entries, investigation reports, and email/text messages. I was sucked into this glamorous world and didn't want to leave.

Following an NYU student, aspiring writer Lora Ricci landed a Summer internship at ELLE magazine. During her time at ELLE, she became close to Cat Wolff, a contributing editor from a wealthy family. Lora's life changed after she agreed to be Cat's ghostwriter.

I don't want to give away too much information because it was THAT good. The format of this book was brilliant. I also loved the entrepreneurship element that was part of the story. Frankly, I built a fashion app in the past and applied to YCombinator, so I was somewhat familiar with the process.

On top of that, the author Susan Rigetti, née Fowler, was a software engineer. I read her infamous blog back in 2017 when she wrote about her experience working at Uber--revealing the sexual harassment in the workforce. Yet, despite what happened in the past, she came back into the spotlight with a new cover story.

#CoverStory:⁣
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Inventing Anna fans, Catch Me If You Can Fans, whew, do I have a story for you. I’ve been in a slump and Cover Story ripped me out of it ASAP. I start this book around 8 AM and finished 12 short hours later. I’d read a page between folding laundry, and listen while doing chores. It was such an enjoyable read! ⁣
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Our girl Lora (not to be confused with @questsandcrimes even though, that’s who I pictured) lands her dream intern gig at ELLE magazine! There, she meets mega rich Cat, who befriends the gal. Lora, broke, no place to live and scholarshipless, drops out of school and goes to be a ghostwriter for Cat. Cat in turn, gives Lora a room and introduced her to this ridiculous lavish lifestyle. ⁣
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There’s different mediums and I loved the diary entries. The story is also told through texts, emails, and FBI transcripts. I loved it so much. They were so neat and really impacted the story so well. It completely complimented the plot and had me hooked. Like I said previously, was an email thread. I wish it was something I could have physically seen, but it still made sense via audio to not confuse me. ⁣
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I do like we discussed a lot of the social media and influencing aspect. The hashtags in their post had me giggling #hashtag. I kind if wish we spent a bit more time at Elle and got to know the girls more.
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The audio was amazing read by Carlotta Brentan. (A History of Wild Places, Nice Girls) Carlotta is climbing up to my top list of readers and this was one of my favorite listens. ⁣
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Overall, this definitely gives you the Inventing Anna vibes, and I think this couldn’t have come out at a better time with the wild success from Netflix. I absolutely loved this book and felt Rigetti definitely got the last laugh with that ending. Thank you so much @harperaudio and @williammorrowbooks for the gifted copy. Cover Story is out now.. and I need more people talking about it.

A con artist semi heist story?! By the end of the story, I was left wondering what the heck just happened, in the best way possible! Focused mainly on Lora Ricci’s relationship with Catt Wolf, an editor at Elle Magazine that she is working with, this is a well written novel, written in text, diary entries, emails, inter-office chats/IMs, and Instagram posts. I was so entertained that I just kept reading and if I had the opportunity, probably would have finished in a day or so. What a ride!
Four star read for sure! This is a book I need to own in print format as soon as I can get my hands on it!
Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow for the opportunity to read this in exchange for my honest opinion.

This fast-paced read centers on naive college student Lora as she lands her dream internship at Elle magazine, while the rest of her life is falling to pieces. Enter Cat Wolf, a vivacious, engaging heiress who also wants to write fiction and make a name for herself as a writer. Told through Lora's diary, as well as text messages and FBI/US Attorney case file reports and emails between Cat and others (frequently using pseudonyms), the reader follows the developing relationship and the ensuing scam as they unfold . . . . until the surprise last pages when the true depth of the confidence game slam the case closed!

A novel from the pages of the current news - With all the stories there are about people bein tricked into believing a fanciful stories and lifestyle then being taken for their livelihoods , this story fells follows that trend.

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti is a book in a different format. It is comprised entirely of text messages, email messages, FBI memos, and diary entries. It is a story about a woman's destruction, sinking into the world of identity theft and embezzlement. The story opens with Lora Ricci applying for a summer internship at the fashion magazine giant, ELLE. She is a junior at NYU, unlikely to become a senior as she has finally met academia that she would not conquer. She has a grade point average in the dumper and has lost her scholarship. She is, however, living in New York, her dream. She gets the internship, meets Cat Wolff, and begins her descent into the world of criminality, albeit as an innocent.

This story is full of questions. Are either of them really innocent? Has Lora been committing crimes in Cat's name? There are so many open-ended questions. I bit coin really used to perpetrate crimes like these? Is it really this easy to get a book published if you have an already well-known name? I never knew what was coming next? Was anyone really who they said they were? I was often confused, which is no doubt what the author planned. I was sometimes angry at how easy it seemed to be to commit thee crimes. There are all kinds of people needing small loans or a home mortgage that can't get them, but people like this can borrow millions? It makes me angry. It was an oddly moving story, leaving me questioning whom the bad guys were.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of Cover Story by Harper Collins, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #netgalley #harpercollins #susanrigetti #coverstory

At first I thought this book was quite a bit like the Anna Delvey story, but although there are similarities, it goes off in a totally different direction. I felt so sorry for poor Lora, an intern at Elle magazine who has just lost her scholarship to NYU. She befriends the glamorous Cat and the adventures begin. I couldn’t put the book down and read it in one day. Totally surprised by the end.

What a wild ride. Told from a series of journal entries, text messages, emails etc. is the story of a college student, Lora, who starts an internship of her dreams at Elle magazine. Lora gets caught up with A high society contributing editor, the charismatic Cat Wolff, at the magazine. Loras life gets turned upside down from dropping out of school, lying to her parents and moving in with Cat and helping her ghostwrite some short stories. From Cat showing Lora her extravagant lifestyle and fashion that’s so different from her world Lora gets caught up in a scheme that might just show her that life isn’t always greener on the other side. Twists and turns galore make this a book you can’t put down!

What did I read?

If it had been a YA, it's score would have been higher, but I was told it's an adult book, making it a bit immature imo.
The texts back and forth on some of the ladies was so high school, not adult.
I liked the set up, but our main character was so gullible and naive that she was just killing me over. I liked the set up, the jobs, but the characters, I cannot really think of one that I liked. And that twisted ending, what...?

My biggest question is did the con get conned by a con?

Thank you #Bookclubgirl, #willial-morrow for allowing me to read through Netgalley for my honest opinion.

At first, I loved how Susan Rigetti told the story of Lora Ricci, an NYU dropout (lost her scholarship), who obtained a summer internship at Elle Magazine and Cat Wolff who is a contributing editor to Elle and lives in a two bedroom suite at the Plaza Hotel. The book starts out at a fast pace by telling the story through Lora’s diary entries, texts, emails, and F.B.I. memos and emails. What does the FBI have to do with summer interns and Cat Wolff? I raced through approximately the first fifty percent of the book and then it got a bit repetitive and unbelievable. Then there was the confusing ending. It just did not work for me. I think the audience for this book should be college age and young adult. My thanks to William Morrow Custom House and NetGalley for an ARC of this book. The opinions in this review are my own.