Review: Cover Story by Susan Rigetti

Netflix’s Inventing Anna and Hulu’s The Dropout meets Catch Me If You Can, a captivating novel about an ambitious young woman who gets trapped in a charismatic con artist’s scam.

After a rough year at NYU, aspiring writer Lora Ricci is thrilled to land a summer internship at ELLE magazine where she meets Cat Wolff, contributing editor and enigmatic daughter of a clean-energy mogul. Cat takes Lora under her wing, soliciting her help with side projects and encouraging her writing.

As a friendship emerges between the two women, Lora opens up to Cat about her desperate struggles and lost scholarship. Cat’s solution: Drop out of NYU and become her ghostwriter. Lora agrees and, when the internship ends, she moves into Cat’s suite at the opulent Plaza Hotel. Writing during the day and accompanying Cat to extravagant parties at night, Lora’s life quickly shifts from looming nightmare to dream-come-true. But as Lora is drawn into Cat’s glamorous lifestyle, Cat’s perfect exterior cracks, exposing an illicit, shady world.

A whip-smart and delightfully inventive writer, Susan Rigetti brilliantly pieces together a perceptive, humorous caper full of sharp observations about scam culture. Composed of diary entries, emails, FBI correspondence, and more, Cover Story is a fresh, fun, and wholly original novel that takes readers deep into the codependency and deceit found in a relationship built on power imbalance and lies.

• Title: Cover Story
• Author:  Susan Rigetti
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company 
• Publication Date: April 5th, 2022
• Genre: Mystery Thriller  
• Targeted Age Range: Adult 
• Content Warnings: fraud, scam, car accident, gaslighting, toxic relationships, emotional manipulation
• Rating: ★★★★.5

It’s been almost a month since I first read Cover Story, and honestly, I’m still a little mind blown! I had heard good things about Cover Story from some friends, so when I was trying to pick an audiobook to start at work one day it seemed like the obvious choice. Let me tell you, I am so glad that I listened to them and gave this book a chance, because I am obsessed!

Told entirely through journal entries, emails, text messages, FBI correspondence, newspaper articles, and the like, Cover Story follows aspiring writer Lora Ricci, an intern at ELLE magazine who is trying to get her life back on track after a difficult semester at NYU. During her internship she meets ELLE contributing editor, Cat Wolff. Cat quickly brings Lora into her orbit and Lora is utterly captivated. When Cat proposes that Lora leave her internship and become her ghost writer, Lora jumps at the chance — after all, she’s always wanted to be a writer. As the two grow closer, secrets from Cat’s past come to light and expose Lora to an illicit and shady world she didn’t know existed. Lora then has to decide, does she stay by Cat’s side and help her navigate the fallout, or does she walk away for good?

As I mentioned, I read Cover Story via audiobook and I must give a shout out to the narrator Carlotta Brentan. She was a fantastic narrator! Each character had their own distinct voice and personality, making it very easy to know which character was speaking. Her inflections and pacing were spot on and she was able to really lean into the drama and high stakes as the story went on. If you’re thinking about reading via audiobook, I would highly recommend it!

I loved everything about Cover Story. I loved the epistolary writing style and think that it was the perfect way to tell this story. Because we read the majority of the story through Lora’s journal entries, I think it’s easy to get cast under Cat’s spell — but not necessarily in the same way as Lora. With every page I found myself more and more suspicious of Cat and was dying to know more about her as most of the details of her life are very vague. She’s the daughter of a clean-energy mogul, she’s a contributing editor at ELLE, she’s rich and knows all the right people — but who exactly is Cat Wolff? No one really knows, and that’s what makes her so captivating. 

Lora’s descriptions and perceptions of Cat make her seem like this incredible and untouchable woman (she practically places Cat on a pedestal) then in contrast, there are the newspaper articles, emails, text messages, FBI correspondence, etc. from other people’s point of view that makes you question whether the Cat Lora knows is the real Cat, or if Lora and the reader, are being completely fooled.

The ending of this book…I won’t really go into detail because I don’t want to spoil it, but I have not stopped thinking about it. I’ll be going about my day and suddenly my brain goes, “So the ending of Cover Story” and I just stand there like the wide eyed emoji. I definitely had a feeling that things would play out the way that they did, but I didn’t truly know until the end, and I was shocked that my suspicions were correct because it just felt so improbable. I finished the book and just sat there at my desk going, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God!?”, which, in my opinion, is the mark of a great twist! I’m looking forward to rereading it and really analyzing all the clues that were dropped along the way. 

Cover Story is one of the best debut novels I’ve read in some time, and I will without a doubt be checking out anything Susan Rigetti writes in the future. If you’re a fan of Catch Me if You Can and Inventing Anna, you absolutely must add Cover Story to your TBR!

Links for Cover Story: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound