Thank you to @doubledaybooks for my gifted copy! This one publishes on 3/3/2020!
The Body Double by Emily Beyda (#19 in 2020)
When a man named Max comes to her small town, he recognizes that she'll be perfect for "the role." After signing an NDA and leaving her entire life behind her, our narrator moves to Los Angeles to become the body double for Rosanna Feld, the famous disaster-and-a-half celebrity. Our narrator learns how to act, talk, walk, and think like Rosanna Feld, and she is coached by Max until he feels she is ready to make her public debut. But this very unique job assignment seems to seem less of an honor as our narrator begins to uncover some sinister secrets.
The Body Double makes the reader question how we, as a society, value physical appearance and the lengths one would take to be like a favorite Hollywood star.
I truly love how the narrator is never named. It simply adds to the idea of how irrelevant her true identity is. Every time she is spoken to or offers up her name, she is referred to (and refers to herself) as Rosanna. On the surface, it seems so superficial, but it's an eerily dark concept beneath the surface. Our narrator is too easily convinced to sacrifice her true identity and all she knows for the prospect at being connected to Hollywood, and her regrets slowly arise until she is in too far to turn back.
If you check Goodreads, the book is labeled as a thriller, but I honestly don't think it fits into that category. I would likely place it in the genre of contemporary fiction that is just dipping its toes into horror. If this book becomes a movie, I hope the darker parts are emphasized to place this into the horror genre.
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