I enjoyed reading this book. As someone who likes reading about people in history, this is really up my alley. It’s well researched and well-written. Definitely a page turner!

The Impostor Heiress tells the story of Cassie Chadwick, the woman who bankrupted banks and businessmen from Cleveland all the way to Boston by pretending she was Andrew Carnegie's bastard daughter. How? How could see have gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars before being caught? Simply by using a couple forged checks and by using the stereotypes of women to her advantage.

I mostly enjoyed the way Annie Reed presented Chadwick's incredible life with bits of Carnegie's life thrown in from time to time. The Impostor Heiress is written as if we are both inside the heads of the people involved in these scandals and as if we were simultaneously watching it unfold in the present. It was certainly well researched and presented in a way that will grip even the most reluctant of non fiction readers. This is perhaps because it was written in the same side by side style as The Devil in the White City; Erik Larson's famed book shows the juxtaposition between Chicago's World Fair and America's first well known serial killer, which opened up the world of nonfiction to many readers (but that I personally found incredibly dry).

Despite finding The Impostor Heiress to be overall more readable than most non fiction there were times while reading where I felt my attention drifting due to too much information on one thing or not enough information on another. The book had a lot that was perfectly balanced, the explanation of what Cleveland was like for example never felt overwhelming. But I couldn’t help but feel like Chadwick's cons were explained too in depth after a certain point. With so many figures and names being explained I just didn't care anymore because the point had already been driven home too many times. On the flip side, I would have loved to have had more moments of juxtaposition with Carnegie. Despite having nothing to do with Chadwick, it was fascinating to read about his life along side hers. I think having Carnegie's life explained even more fully would have helped drive the point of how audacious Chadwick's con was rather than the sometimes seemingly endless listing of exactly much money she conned and from who and how she spent it.

Overall, The Impostor Heiress was a solid non fiction read that I would recommend to any reader. It has a little bit of everything from scandals to feminism and history to gossip! I can see this becoming just as wildly read as The Devil in the White City, especially since it has an even greater appeal. Who wouldn't want to read more about this fabulous, audacious woman?!

At the start I did really like this book. I liked the narrative, Cassie is an interesting person, and I was curious to see her scams grow. However, I feel like this book gets bogged down by details and other people's backstory quite a lot. By the end of this book I didn't even really feel like it was about Cassie anymore. It was just a really slow moving read, and I ended up quite bored, which is such a shame because Cassie's life and scams are so wild. It seemed impossible to be able to be bored while reading about it.

Really enjoyed getting to know Cassie Chadwick an extraordinary scammer who managed to fool so many.An entertaining look at the Gilded Age wonderful read for me.#netgalley #diversionbooks

This book was so much fun. A combo of the Gilded Age and just hustle scamming culture, I enjoyed learning about Cassie's journey to better her circumstances through forgery, trickery, and plain old delusion dreams of grandeur. I highly recommend this book for history buffs, future scammers, or fans of the Gilded Age tv show.

Thanks so much to netgalley and Diversion books for the arc of this one in exchange for an honest review!

I liked this nonfiction book! We follow a woman as she cons a bunch of people. I thought this was very interesting. I liked the writing and how everything was laid out.

This book was interesting and kept my attention! I would recommend this one to anyone looking for unique nonfiction.

Cassie Chadwick was a master con artist who amassed a fortune using charm, cunning, and forged documents. Over fifteen years, she reinvented herself, swindling trusting souls across the country. Her Carnegie con, where she posed as Andrew Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter, made her impossibly rich. But the crash of her schemes shattered banks and bankers alike. This riveting, fun-to-read, and well-researched true-crime story reveals the life of a woman whose audacious cons captivated the nation.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Well-researched and well-written, the author’s note indicates that The Imposter Heiress is a work of nonfiction but it reads like historical fiction. What follows is a fascinating account of a female con artist and her wealthy, upper-class victims.

For years, Cassie Chadwick convinced the same men to repeatedly loan her enormous sums of money, and they continually bought her lies of ‘repayment coming soon,’ only to loan her MORE money.
“This time tomorrow, or perhaps the day after. Certainly, before three days had elapsed.”
Yet payment never came. She outwitted these men for years. YEARS! And they kept giving her money! Like, you need $300? Let me give you $1000! You need $1500? I’ll give you $10,000!

“Duped, duped by a woman!”
How could it be so?? Cassie was either the smartest woman ever or they were the dumbest men ever. I mean, no one ever thought to stop giving her money or to take possession of some of her property as payment or, I don’t know, go to the police?? I mean, one man loaned her so much of his own personal money that he was left with only $11 in his bank account! What?! But Cassie was betting on that - she knew that they would want to avoid the embarrassment brought on themselves if anyone knew of their participation in her con.

Fascinating. A truly fascinating true crime story.
I have no idea how she did it.

Interesting read. Didn't know much about Cassie Chadwick and her scams. Story is told pretty well although it does get bogged down in details sometimes. Fascinating how well she was able to blend into society as well as continue scamming.

"Paroled felon. Rich doctor's wife. Famous clairvoyant. Cassie Chadwick, one of history's most successful con artists, was a master of reinvention. In the dusk of the Gilded Age, she swept from town to town, assuming fresh identities to swindle a fortune so large that it rivaled the robber barons of the time.

Then came arguably the greatest con in American history. Using forged documents and her peerless wits, Cassie convinced prominent men from Cleveland to New York City that she was the illegitimate daughter of the world's wealthiest man - Andrew Carnegie.

Businessmen loaned her hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time; the ensuing crash shattered banks and bankers alike. Her sensational trial made her a household name. The newspapers called her the "Queen of Swindlers," the "Duchess of Diamonds," the "High Priestess of Fraudulent Finance."

Interspersing Cassie's crimes with stories of an unsuspecting Andrew Carnegie, author Annie Reed spins an enthralling, page-turning tale of true crime. Long before Anna Delvey captivated national attention, there was Cassie Chadwick - mother of the American con."

I marvel at those who could pull of these kind of cons, one of which we saw on this most recent season of The Gilded Age.

I always have mixed feelings about enjoying con artist books because they are often unsettling but fun to read. Reed is a gifted writer, here and shows all the complexities of Cassie Chadwick and how she fit and didn’t fit into history. The text raises questions it can’t really answer but I think it’s important to grapple with notions of femininity and social class. Some pieces feel glossed over and there are gaps that left me wanting more information. But overall, enjoyed learning about this early con woman.

Fascinating!
I had no idea who Cassie Chadwick was and the title, subtitle, and cover all drew me in.
Although 150 of the 200+ pages were basically Chadwick taking trains to get bank notes and borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, Reed's writing had me hooked and wanting more. Props to an author that can take repeat, mundane, things and keep a reader's rapt attention (that may sound like a back handed compliment, but I mean well).
I think there were a couple of holes and missing bits of information about Cassie Chadwick but overall a good, bingeable book.

I really wanted to love this book. The subject matter is fascinating and the era is one I've been drawn to since reading the works of Edith Wharton. But for some reason I just found this a bit of a slog. I usually read straight through books, but I found myself putting this aside and then trying to come back to it time and time again before finally abandoning it altogether. My favorite history books are those that tell the story so well that you're drawn in and carried along almost forgetting at moments that the book is detailing real events. Unfortunately, this book never did that for me.

I received an advanced copy of this courtesy of NetGalley.

The subject is fascinating having fabricated a make believe existence, most notably as the bastard child of Andrew Carnegie, and having initiated massive amounts of fraud on the backs of others who actually believed such lies to be real.

The book does well when it juxtaposes the real-life undertakings of Cassie Chadwick and Andrew Carnegie beside each other. In Chadwick’s case, it’s how she goes about transforming her actual identity from small-town Elizabeth Bigley into more extravagant and interesting ones like Madame DeVere and Cassie Chadwick. In Carnegie’s case, it’s how he transforms from lower management to ruthless steel tycoon to benevolent philanthropist. Carnegie took advantage of his workers for his own benefit but saw it through the eyes of building communities and his philanthropic legacy. Chadwick took advantage of many bankers and husbands but saw no problem with it because she felt she deserved it for herself and presumed the money borrowed as the so-called daughter of Carnegie would be far too inconsequential for Carnegie not to make whole. The trouble was Carnegie was a man and his actions were perfectly legal at the time in spite of them being done off the backs of his poor workers whereas Chadwick’s actions were illegal and made even worse in that she was a woman performing such a massive fraud.

Where this books fails, though, is in skipping over an essential part of her life in having her child Emil and how she courted Dr. Leroy Chadwick. It does not go into detail about how in fact she got pregnant in the first place and likely glosses over the likelihood she was a prostitute at some point in her life. Emil was the likely result of that and she also conspired to bring him into her fraudulent affairs in the end as per the book. It is also unclear how she was able to immerse herself into high society and convince Dr. Leroy Chadwick to propose to her after she spent hard time at the Ohio State Prison for her second or third fraud conviction. It’s highly unlikely she got out of prison and just got accepted at face value as a single mother with a child whose father could be alive. The book makes it seem that she was mostly bad at times but then she was genuinely nice and good-natured at other times. There had to have been a gray area - what was that? These events essentially led her to pretend that Cassie Chadwick was the bastard child of Andrew Carnegie and the lack of context on them leaves the book lagging.

A con-artist from age 16, Cassie Chadwick was a woman with many names and many occupations. From clairvoyant to a doctor’s wife, to the daughter of a magnate, Cassie Chadwick wrote her own story filled with embellishments and full fledged lies. I’m a huge fan of this time period because it’s typically very dramatic and this true story certainly delivered on the drama. I was hooked from the first page to the very last. I’d love to see this on the big screen! If you enjoyed Inventing Anna or The Gilded Age then I highly recommend this fascinating book!

I was alternating between 3 and 4 stars as I really wanted to give 3.5 so I rounded up based on the amount of research and details the author had to keep track of. Those same details about the promissory notes and bank checks and trusts made it a little hard to follow sometimes, but I have never heard of Cassie Chadwick before and her overall schemes and how she maneuvered them were interesting to read about.

The Imposter Heiress by Annie Reed tells the fantastical story of Cassie Chadwick, a legendary con-artist of the Gilded Age. This story is so hard to believe, yet it’s completely true. But honestly, in most con artist stories, arent they always a little incredulous?


I had first come across Cassie Chadwick a few months ago, when theories started to abound that the character of Maud Beaton on The Gilded Age (HBO) was based on the infamous grifter. I had never heard of Cassie before, so I began to do a little research. Born to a small town, Cassie always dreamed of having more…more of everything! Her cons started small. She lived unconventionally for a women of her time, even bearing a child out of wedlock. Eventually, her scams failed, and she had a stint in the penitentiary. However, she didn’t waste her time, but used it to strengthen her plans and focus on where she went wrong. As her plans changed and grew, so did her desire for me. Using her “feminine wiles” Cassie began to target those who thought she really didn’t know what to do when it came to money. And then she threw out those potent words, “Carnegie.” And from there, Cassie found herself living the high life. To find out more definitely pick up this book!

My only gripe with this book, and this more has to do with how women have always been treated in history, is a lot of the narrative focuses on the men who play roles in Cassie’s story.

You have to read to believe it. I highly recommend this novel for fans of Con Artists, the Gilded Age (show and time period), and fans of women’s history. These stories need to be told; women weren’t just background actors in history!

Thank you to Diversion Books and NetGalley for the E-Arc!

Reminiscent of Devil in the White City and Inventing Anna, The Imposter Heiress manages to be a historical true crime story about a thief that the audience is kind of rooting for. Targeting the wealthy and entire banks, Cassie accumulates the kind of wealth that would make the above-average Newport, Rhode Island resident blush. Scenes are painted of the exquisite velvet gowns, drawers full of jewels, extravagant trips to Europe, singing chairs, fine china with her face painted on it. Yet despite all of that opulence, Cassie exploited men that absolutely should have known better. She utilized their misogyny to rake in the dough.

Author Annie Reed is witty and informative while covering the life of Cassie Chadwick. While the unextraordinary lead up to Cassie’s crimes is covered, Reed knows we want to hear about the crimes, how she planned it, and the trial that followed. It would have been exceedingly easy to write the story of Cassie Chadwick to reflect a spoiled girl who plundered her way through Ohio with little regard for those who laid beneath the ruin. However, I found the humor which colored the stupidity of the men she swindled, and the impressive work that Cassie put into her grift to provide a much more entertaining story.

Afterall, girls just wanna have fun, right?

The Impostor Heiress is absolutely mind blowing.

Like how did she do it? How are people this gullible? Did they really think that she had the means, and that scandal hadn't been leaked prior?

Absolutely mind blowing, but Annie Reed is right, these names will be remembered, until the next one (in our case, it's presently Anna Delvey).

Mind blowing how simple her whole charade is/was.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for my E-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book was such a fun read! Anna Delvey had nothing on our heroine as she cons her way through high society. The Imposter Heiress is A fast paced story about trying to survive on your wit. I loved it.