Snag Fake Like Me Illustrated By Barbara Bourland Publication

the unnamed narrator of this story is a fledgling artist from Florida, currently a sophomore at the Academy in NYC, and feeling pretty lonely in the big city.
One day she notices a group of five young and beautiful artists who are 'making it' in the art scene, Three of them have graduated from the same art school she's attending and all are becoming well known for their nihilistic and shrewd work, rather all of a type, But it is a young woman of the group named Carey Logan who is the hottest of them all with her hyperrealist sculptures of human body parts,

Oh, how our narrator would love to be just like her and be part of that group now known as Pine City, They form an exclusive artist collective by that name, moving into an old resort in upper New York state, where each has their own studio and other artists are allowed to come by invitation only.


Fast forward toand Carey has stopped working in sculpture and taken up performance art, The reviews are not kind and Carey does one last performance in which she commits suicide on film,

Now three more years have passed and our unnamed artist is making a bit of a splash herself with her billboardsized paintings when disaster strikes and her loft burns with most of her work inside.
She lies to the gallery owner who is selling her work about the extent of her loss and now she must quickly repaint several works for her upcoming show, It's an impossible, super human task and where can she find a studio big enough to hold her work at this late date One art patron she meets comes to her rescue and says she can get her a spot at Pine City.
Wow! Her dream is finally coming true,

The remaining four Pine City artists are not particularly welcoming at first, And she finds it odd that none of them will talk about Carey at all, even though her work still obviously influences theirs, Is there more going on here than meets the eye

I enjoyed the story but I don't think it's going to be everyone's cup of tea, I think you have to be very interested in art and enjoy reading the details of the creative process, The minutia does slow the story done a bit but I think the pace does make sense, It gives the reader an understanding of all the work this artist must go through to recreate her paintings and save her career, Desperate times.

I had at first marked this as a 'thriller' but it is not, The touch of mystery is very light but rather interesting when you finally learn what's going on at Pine City, I think the story is much more about relationships and how people use other people,

I received an arc from the publisher via NetGalley for my honest review, Many thanks. Holy hell I lovedddd this, The characters and the story were so fascinating and enveloped me completely, I will say I really would not classify this as a thriller, but regardless I was on the edge of my seat following such an unstable narrator, One of my new faves I have a sister whos an artist, holy crap the accuracy of how they live, I laughed so many times, I really enjoyed this, but glad I dont go to gallery openings anymore! I can't remember reading anything that delved so deeply into the art world as this, Our narrator, a truly original painter who doesn't know her power, loses her home andth floor walkup studio in a fire and talks her way into an artists' compound of almost mythic reputation in the Adirondacks.

Barbara Bourland claims to not have an in depth knowledge of this world, but this book belies that fact, Her descriptions of the creative process ring so true as our heroine creates her billboardsized oil paintings because "they are the pinnacle of labor," expensive, weighing hundreds of pounds, incorporating such materials as copper shavings and jewels.
Is one's identity only visible through their art or what other viewers may see in that art, or what is bruited abroad, At times I was reminded of Rebecca the protagonist is unnamed, Carey, her predecessor, deceased, the waterfront setting which was the location of Carey's death, This is one hell of a read,

I finished this book last night but needed some time to digest everything I had read, I went back and forth betweenandstarsonly because I'm generally not a big art fan and some of the descriptions bogged me down, but in the end, it was so out of the realm of my expectations and so mindbending, that I felt that alone was worthy ofstars.


I think it's a bit difficult to classify this book it is a suspense, but not really a suspense it is a thriller, but not really a thriller, so ID'ing a target audience is still up in the air for me.
Overall though, I believe readers of mystery/suspense/thrillers/women's fiction will find it to be an intriguing read in many ways, The book delved so deeply in the dark, strange world of art that, at times, it lost me, but those moments were brief just when I would feel my eyes start to glaze over slightly, it would suck me right back in, and I was fully immersed once again.


I'm not always a big fan of firstperson narratives, but this one worked for me, It captured the narrator at the height of a professional disaster her alreadymarketed paintings were destroyed in a fire, and she has onlydays in which to recreate them without anyone letting the proverbial cat out of the bag that the original paintings were destroyed, all while also dragging her into ayear old conspiracy surrounding what happened to famed artist/sculptor, Carey Logan, whom the narrator had idolized since college.
The narrator is offered the chance to live and work at an artists retreat called Pine City also the name of the tightknit group of young, beautiful artists, which included Carey Logan, where Carey lived and died.
The narrators ability to complete her project evolves into a dependence upon finding out what happened to Carey and infiltrating her inner circle of friends however, the more she gets to know the Pine City group of friends, the more she begins to question them and their motives, as well as the circumstances surrounding Carey's death.
It all builds to a hectic climax that parallels the narrator finishing the paintings and solving the mystery of Carey's death,

I didn't expect to be so drawn into the mystery surrounding Carey, but I was to the extent that when all was finally revealed, it felt surreal and left my mind racing as to whether I should have been more in tune to some of the bread crumb clues along the way, because I was completely out in left field with my inclinations as to what happened to Carey and how it would all end.
I figured out one part of the twist early on, but even with that, the ending still surprised me for reasons I can't go in to without spoiling the book and still left me immensely satisfied.
That doesn't happen often, but when it does, I have to dismiss all other minor flaws of a book and say "bravo" to the author! Overall, a superb book that every time I put it down, I eagerly awaited the next time I would be able to pick it up again.
artsy, twisty for me! "𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩'𝙨 𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙮𝙨 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙚𝙡𝙨𝙚, "

𝐴𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑜𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤 Fake Like Me is a visceral, haunting characterdriven suspense novel that delves into the art world, This book will not be for everyone, Its not action packed, there are no gimmicks, Personally I found it intriguing and compulsive, but Im also a lover of fine art, We are never given the narrators name, Shes a somewhat successful, somewhat struggling painter on the cusp of a huge upcoming deadline, Shes finishing up the order of several large scaled pieces when a fire spreads through her studio/home, destroying all her work, Circumstances lead her to an elusive artists retreat where she attempts to recreate her works in an extremely short period of time, and becoming more unstable the closer the deadline gets.
While there she is drawn into the mystery surrounding a suicide that happened on the property years earlier, The book gives an inside look into an artistic, somewhat hedonistic lifestyle within a community of wellknown artists, It has just the right amount of feminism, without bashing you over the head with it, I have

to say I cant imagine NOT reading this on audio, if only to be able to hear the voices of certain characters like Max, Charles or Tyler, In the end I found it modern, smart, and effortlessly cool, I didnt want to leave this noname woman behind but was thoroughly happy with the way it ended, If you enjoy character studies with an air of mystery amp intrigue I highly recommend 𝙁𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙇𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙈𝙚 𝘣𝘺 𝘽𝙖𝙧𝙗𝙖𝙧𝙖 𝘽𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙙, Narrated by 𝙓𝙚 𝙎𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙨! Read via Audible, Speed read:.xhrs ampmins Read with Goodreads group 𝙎𝙪𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙚𝙛𝙪𝙡 𝘾𝙡𝙪𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙏𝙝𝙧𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬𝙨, .