Emily Beyda | THE BODY DOUBLE

Plot (via Goodreads):

A strange man discovers our nameless narrator selling popcorn at a decrepit small-town movie theater and offers her an odd and lucrative position: she will forget her job, her acquaintances, even her name, and move to Los Angeles, where she will become the body double of the famous and troubled celebrity Rosanna Feld. A nervous breakdown has forced Rosanna out of the public eye, and she needs a look-alike to take her place in the tabloid media circus of Hollywood. Overseen by Max, who hired her for the job, our narrator spends her days locked up in a small apartment in the hills watching hidden camera footage of Rosanna, wearing Rosanna's clothes, eating the food Rosanna likes, practicing her mannerisms, learning to become Rosanna in every way. But as she makes her public debut as Rosanna, dining at elegant restaurants, shopping in stylish boutiques, and finally risking a dinner party with Rosanna's true inner circle, alarming questions begin to arise. What really caused Rosanna's mental collapse? Will she ever return? And is Max truly her ally, or something more sinister? With echoes of Hitchcock's Vertigo, The Body Double is a fabulously plotted noir about fame, beauty, and the darkness of Hollywood.

Review:

Reading the synopsis The Body Double was like reading the ingredients to your favorite food and thinking to yourself "This doesn't even scratch the surface of this experience." The Body Double by Emily Beyda is an unsettling and masterful psychological thriller that seduces you with its promise of shining lights and the wanderlust of Los Angeles and grips you from the very first chapter, holding you hostage in its prose.

There's something unspoken and magnetic that draws me into stories about fictional women characters that have no direction. The missing, the found, and the grey area in between. The women who have no one, have no path in life. The women who are just kind of floating and looking for something, anything to change their lives. This story is one of those that will beguile you and uses its main character as a prop in the best way possible to give you a psychologically dark and pragmatic character study of two women - the woman our main character is and the woman she is trying to be. The way that Beyda tells this story is unnerving and hypnotic. You crave more of this story and at times, it seems like it's too much to bear. I loved that this story focused heavily on two women that really don't come in contact with each other (or do they?) in a fascinating way that blurs the lines of reality and features this prose that is Hitchcockian. I was beyond shocked that this story was a debut novel and the way that Beyda created this world within the glitz and glamor of Los Angeles was diabolic and gut wrenching. While this one is more of a slow-burner, I still found myself immersed in the story and desperate to find out how it would end. I found myself lost in this story and not wanting to be found throughout the ups and downs of this devastating tale all the way to the bitter and harrowing finale.

Emily Beyda, I don't know how you managed to tell a story in a rather short novel and captivate me the way that you did, but boy-oh-boy am I excited to see what you come up with next. I can honestly say that for weeks after reading this one, it has stuck with me and I anticipate it sticking with me until the day I open the cover of her next novel.


Rating: 4/5