As the book itself ends, Ponzi, who? This was an absolutely wild story. Fake it till you make it for real. I had never heard of Cassie Chadwick before, and the number of people she managed to fool into giving her money is crazy. She kept getting caught and even went to jail and yet reached such crazy heights after that before everything finally crumbled.

This was such an entertaining read; thanks to NetGalley and Diversion Books for the ARC.

I received this book as an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the author and publisher for this opportunity.

I enjoyed learning about Cassie and her scams but this book moved way too slow for my taste.

The Imposter Heiress:
Cassie Chadwick, The Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age
Annie Reed
She was a woman of many identities. She traveled from town to town changing identities like most people change socks. She ran scams in each new town. While others worked for their money Cassie worked hard to swindl it from others. Her biggest scam was the Carnegie con. She managed to persuade many prominent men that she was Andrew Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter. They were all generous with their checkbooks, loaning her hundreds of thousands of dollars. She amassed a fortune from the scam, then the stock market crashed, and she was exposed. The newspapers called her the Queen of Swindlers, the Duchess of Diamonds, the High Priestess of Fraudulent Finance. The trial was spectacular, and the nation was fixated on it.
Author Annie Reed brings Cassie Chadwick to life on the pages of this book. This tale is based on actual facts. Well written and fascinating.
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book for review purposes.

I loved the idea of this book but as I started reading I could tell this wasn't the book for me. I got bored rather quickly.

I really liked the idea of this book. I love a real life true crime story. The beginning of the book had my attention but at about 30%. I was struggling to continue. The story line and characters were getting confusing and I felt I should have been much further along in the book than I was. This will be put on my did not finish list unfortunately.

I really wanted to like this book as I loved the concept, but I found the execution to be lacking. Annie Reed wrote a good book about a fascinating person, and I wanted to feel more drawn to Cassie than I did. I felt that explanations for Cassie's behavior was explained fully through want of money, and while I'm sure that is mostly true, I wanted more nuance built in. I believe this book will be great for many, it just didn't quite hit the spot for me.
Also, the formatting of this book through netgalley is virtually unreadable, which worsened the experience for me. Annie

The formatting was super funky. I don’t know if this was just an issue that occurred after the file was sent to my Kindle or if the book is truly laid out oddly.
DNF because of this.