Thank you to Knopf Publishing and PRH Audio for the free copies to review.

I enjoyed this one, especially via audio which was narrated by Hillary Huber (a favorite of mine). The pacing was slow and steady, and I was really not sure how this was going to work itself out. 20 years ago Jenny St. John starred in an independent film, The Divide, and was on her way to ‘making it’, until the movie tanked and she instead found herself scraping by as a psychic life coach. Current day, the director of said film, Serge Grumet, has been murdered, and Jenny’s life is uprooted as his ex-wife Gena looks a lot like Jenny and the cops think she is one and the same and she has to prove that they are two different people. It took a little while to do this as well as to wrap everything up, and got a bit strange in doing so, but overall was a good read that held my attention the entire time.

A captivating noir thriller that blends elements of mystery, suspense, and dark humor. The writing is sharp and engaging with a cleverly crafted plot. There are well executed twists and turns to keep the reader guessing, and a vibrant cast of supporting characters. The pacing can be a little uneven at times with some sections dragging, but then picking back up.
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book was based on. AG ATH AC.H Rist. I. E! Murder mystery Novels. This was a modern twist to thi This woman named Jenny St. John's.
Move to l Los Angeles the star in the movie called the Divide. The director's name was SER GE AR.. The movie do not make anybody because it failed. He is found murdered and this week's too.The book really taking off. His ex-wife named g.E!N.E went missing as well. This was a real who done it book and everything ties up together in the end. Yes, everything actually plot. And suspense.

Morgan Richter has crafted an excellent modern-day whodunnit with a touch of supernatural elements in The Divide. Jenny St. John is down on her luck as a psychic. When she hears of the murder of an old friend and the disappearance of an alleged doppelgänger among the more affluent LA crowd, she seizes the opportunity to put her "psychic" skills to the test.

The book was full of twist and turns in a way that was much more unpredictable than I thought it would be, especially as things were wrapping up. The general whodunnit plot line was mildly predictable, but the addition of the supernatural elements and the doppelgänger aspect gave room for a wilder ending. I think there were a few minor plot holes towards the end, but otherwise it was a very satisfying read. I will add this title to my list of go-to recommendations for those looking for a murder mystery with a little bit more! Thank you to Morgan Richter, Penguin Random House and NetGalley for the ARC!

Part noir, part thriller, this Hollywood-esque story will suck you in and not let go until the very end.

Jenny was in a failed movie when she was 19 and never saw her movie career take off, but a lifetime later, the director is dead and his wife, Gena, is missing. When the cops think Jenny is Gena, Jenny is thrown into Gena's world.

This is a twisty book, which I really appreciated it. I never really knew where the story was going. The setting is phenomenal- who doesn't love the rich and famous in Hollywood.

The characters were so interesting. Starting with Jenny, each character felt mysterious. Richter did a really good job of slowly revealing characters, mostly by ending chapters with a cliffhanger that will surely rob you of sleep.

The plot moves at different speeds- sometimes very fast and other times, it's a slow burn. The ending can be unsatisfactory for some, so if you're not ok with loose ends, it might seem like a let down. However, it does allow the reader to finish the story in their heads, which is always a win for me.

Thank you, @berkleypub for this gifted book!

The Divide follows a failed actress turned psychic who searches for her doppleganger who is missing. She winds up mixed up in a dark web of deceit and corruption among the Hollywood elite. But as Jenny gets deeper and deeper in her quest for the missing doppleganger, she discovers things about herself and her past that could ruin her life.

While I really wanted to love this one, it fell at a solid 3 for me. A lot of unrealistic characters gave way to a middle of the road summary. The cover is awesome, and the premise is good, it just didn't work for me the way I wanted it to.

The first part is a great premise. A rich woman (Gena) has a lookalike (FMC Jenny) and unknown to the FMC loops her in to shake things up. (Jenny might actually be a famous (murdered) directors painter wife, Gena, who's gone missing and looks just like her) The plot however things out and feels strained for the remained of the book.

I mostly enjoyed this book, but some of the characters really bothered me and there were so many unanswered questions at the end, both of which knocked it down a few stars for me.

THE DIVIDE
Morgan Richter

Thank goodness I went back and read the synopsis!

All the notes I took for the summary of this book are spoilers so I will stick to what the publisher’s synopsis says. If you’ve read it and want to discuss spoilers, let me know. We can work it out.

Jenny is a psychic, who uses her smarts more than her abilities. Instead of reading tarot card spreads she reads her clients, and she gets by day to day this way. One day a detective lands on her doorstep telling her that a director she worked with on a movie in a prior life has been murdered, and she is at the top of the list of people to talk to.

Jenny once starred in a movie. The movie did not do so well, and it ended up being her only role. She would like to forget this time in her life, but this detective is bringing it all backup. The detective says she looks eerily like Gena, her former director’s ex-wife.

Let’s simplify that:
Jenny looks like Gena. Gena is the director’s ex-wife.

Jenny is immediately drawn into Gena’s life, thinking if she solved the mystery of her she would unravel the mystery that is herself.

This was so close to being a fully formulated thought. But it failed to complete the circle and leaves that up to you, the reader. It can come across as vague if you’re looking for further meaning.

You can read a book two ways, one by skimming the surface, the second by diving into the deep end. I usually dive deep but understand not everyone wants to swim in murky waters like I do.

On the surface, this is a mystery, a thriller. And in the shallow waters, it wades sufficiently. However, at the deep end of the pool, it drowns. I get exactly what it was trying to do. But I think the point could be easily missed. And I guess I simply require more for a higher rating.

This one landed at a three and a low three at that. I do not recommend it to every reader. You’ll have to infer a lot to figure out if it is for you.

Thanks to Netgalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf for the advanced copy!

THE DIVIDE…⭐️⭐️⭐️

Spoilers ahead so don't read if you don't want to know.
This was an interesting premise of the book and I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book. When the explanation about "the divide" happened it was not what I expected and sort of convoluted the story a bit and left me scratching my head somewhat and the way it was written was sort of questioning in my mind - I had to ask myself - WHAT did I read - I felt there were other paths that could have been taken to explain certain things then an actual division of one's self. What was a solid 4 - 4.5 star who-done-it dropped a star with that twist/explanation

Thank you to NetGalley for this E-ARC.

This was an interesting book. I’m assuming that’s its written in a way so that you can guess what’s supposed to happen. I enjoyed it but it was kind of the same as dark matter.

It was an interesting book. Kind of predictable but still interesting.

Thank you Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor -- Knopf for allowing me to read and review The Divide by Morgan Richter on NetGalley.

Published: 08/20/24

Stars: 3

Strong start. I loved the wit and snarky attitude of the main character. I laughed the first third of the book. I loved everything about her. All of a sudden I'm in the early days of Ground Hog Day (A movie where a day starts over repeatedly.) Every time two people meet the conversation is the same. There is a missing person, there is a doppelganger, there is a "psychic," there was a movie, each person is questioned. Then the main character rethinks the conversation. I wanted to cry. The quirkiness wore off. The last third of the book felt as if time stood still.

There were a couple missing pieces, I was waiting for a solution or explanation and couldn't tell you the answers. A part of me thinks that boredom settled in and perhaps I missed the answers. If there is a sequel, I'm going to pass on it.

In addition, Richter didn't hold back on the profanity.

Once upon a time, Jenny St John was an aspiring actress with one excellent leading role credit to her name. That movie, unfortunately, was never released, though its director Serge Grumet would go on to find lasting fame in the film industry. Jenny, on the other hand, bounced from audition to audition before finally giving up and taking on a different acting role entirely: dispensing advice to clients as a (fake) psychic while hiding her struggle to make ends meet.

When a police officer drops in on her clinic one day, her entire world is turned upside down. Not because she’s busted as a fraud – she’s way too good at reading people for that – but because Detective Moreau comes bearing bad news. Serge is dead, having been murdered in his Malibu home, and his ex-wife Gena Santos has gone missing. More pertinently to Jenny’s life, Gena was the spitting image of her, even going so far as to claim that Jenny’s role in The Divide was actually hers and that that had been how she and Serge met in the first place.

Jenny quickly proves to the detective that she and Gena are two entirely different people, even as she quietly seethes over this usurpation of the one big accomplishment of her life. Unable to help herself, she begins to poke into what happened to Serge and Gena, aided by Gena’s glamorous best friend, the Oscar-winning actress Boots Pontifex, who unreservedly believes in Jenny’s abilities. As well she should, for Jenny isn’t just your average con artist:

QUOTE
My favorite part of being a psychic–okay, yes, a fraudulent psychic–was getting the chance to solve puzzles. I loved digging beneath the surface of a client’s request and unearthing answers to the questions they hadn’t quite dared to put into words. I loved talking to people, thinking about them, figuring out what made them tick. I loved analyzing situations and behaviors, searching for anomalies and discovering logical explanations. I loved all of that, and I was good at it. Given enough time and freedom to snoop around and ask questions, I figured I could find Serge’s killer, and I could find Gena.
END QUOTE

The more Jenny digs, though, the more disturbing parallels she finds between herself and the missing woman. Neither of them has ever been eager to talk about the past, but both had embraced creative pursuits, with Jenny’s unsuccessful foray into acting contrasting with Gena’s accomplishments as an artist. As Jenny enters Gena’s rarefied world, she’s further disoriented by her effect on Gena’s inner circle. Almost everyone who knew Gena is taken aback by Jenny’s resemblance to her, and had accepted without question that Gena had starred in The Divide. Now Jenny is shaking up their long-standing beliefs, inadvertently provoking a killer to strike again in the process

Even as she faces a deadly physical threat, Jenny must deal with the existential crisis that Gena has engendered in her psyche. For so long, the one bright spot in her life as she teetered just above the poverty line was the pride she could take in her biggest accomplishment to date. Now some strange woman has stolen that, in addition to living the life of creative success that Jenny has always wanted.

It’s so unusual to find a murder mystery novel that grapples so thoughtfully with these questions of fate, identity and the paths not taken. Jenny is a very sympathetic narrator, smart but unlucky, regretful but also perhaps a little too hard on herself, especially in comparison to how forgiving she is of others:

QUOTE
It had made me feel shabby to realize I’d been one of many, that this was Serge’s well-documented modus operandi, that he apparently boinked his leading ladies and forgot about them as soon as the production had wrapped. All that aside, though, Serge had twice married age-appropriate women who had achieved substantial success in a field outside the entertainment industry. Maybe that mitigated his louche behavior, at least somewhat.

It’d be nice to think so. Because as much as I’d liked Serge at the time, as much as I still felt warmly toward him, as fantastic and life shaping an experience as filming The Divide had been, every once in a while I found it hard to shake off the nagging suspicion that maybe Serge was a bit of a sleazeball.
END QUOTE

Jenny’s investigation into Serge’s murder and Gena’s disappearance forces her to reevaluate many things she thought she knew, about both herself and others. It makes for a gripping tale of LA noir, even if I didn’t already have a soft spot for wisecracking fake-psychic detectives. It’s also a surprisingly wistful examination of the way that certain decisions can cause our life paths to diverge. I don’t know if I necessarily loved the way that the speculative fiction twist was posited in the narrative – I didn’t find it of a tone with the rest of the novel – but I did very much like the idea. I hope we’ll get a chance to read more of Jenny’s adventures in future, despite the fact that this book doesn’t really set up for a sequel. I just found her so endearing that I really want her to succeed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the eARC.

This was a fun mystery! I loved the setting and the character journeys. I found myself trying and failing to predict the ending.

Loved this mystery by Morgan richter! Jenny is a once-aspiring actress who had a big break in a movie 20 years ago called the divide, but is now working as psychic. When she does a reading for a cop, she discovers that her old director has been murdered and the police are looking for his former wife-gena, a woman who looks identical to Jenny and is claiming to have panted her role in the divide. Bored with her life, Jenny decides to try to find what happened to serge and find out why gena has been using Jenny’s identify. Her quest will take her into hollywoods art world and she will have to grapple with her own past and identity in the process.
This is a beautiful blend of psychological thriller and LA noir with a touch of quirkiness added. Jenny is an interesting protagonist who will draw readers in as she tries to figure out exactly how and why she is involved. The novel moves through many twists and layers as it comes to its big denouement.
This book got me out of a reading slump and richter is a new voice in crime fiction I will be glad to read!

Thanks to the publisher for providing the arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This one was a mixed bag for me. The beginning really pulled me in, but my interest faded as the book went on. A book about mixed up look-alikes and the dark side of Hollywood sounded like it would be right up my alley. I definitely enjoyed some parts of the book, but it fell a bit flat for me. I ended up skimming a lot of it and then feeling kind of confused/let down by the ending. Which was probably my problem, not the book's.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

I love all the things The Divide brings to the table mystery, Hollywood, and some psychic powers. Our main character Jenny along with a host of back up characters are very likable. I did think there were some areas where the book didn't quite move at the speed I would have liked. Overall, I would give it a 3 1/2 stars.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

Morgan Richter’s “The Divide” is a captivating and darkly humorous mystery that plunges readers into the glitzy yet treacherous world of Hollywood.

The story follows Jenny St. John, a failed actress turned grifting psychic, who is thrust into a web of murder and corruption when she searches for her missing doppelgänger.

Richter masterfully explores themes of deception, ambition, and the duality of human nature.

Jenny St. John is a fascinating protagonist, whose sharp wit and resilience make her an engaging guide through the murky waters of Hollywood. Her transformation from a struggling actress to a cunning investigator is both believable and compelling.

Each character is meticulously crafted, with their own secrets and motivations that keep readers guessing.

Richter’s writing is sharp and evocative, capturing the glitz and grime of Hollywood with equal finesse. Her prose is both lyrical and gritty, creating a vivid and immersive reading experience.

The pacing is expertly managed, with each chapter revealing new layers of intrigue and suspense, as well as humor.

“The Divide” is a standout novel that showcases Morgan Richter’s talent for blending mystery, satire, and social commentary. It is a thrilling and thought-provoking exploration of the dark side of fame and the human psyche.

Whether you’re a mystery aficionado or simply looking for a gripping and entertaining read, “The Divide” is a novel that delivers on all fronts. It’s a brilliant addition to the genre and a testament to Richter’s skill as a storyteller.

Wow I really enjoyed this book! I didn’t think I would but I absolutely devoured it. I highly recommend picking this and you won’t want to stop!