The idea for this book sounded really interesting. The beginning of the book was so intriguing, it pulled me right in. The relationship between Max and Rosanna is really strange and the things she goes through to be "Rosanna" made me wonder if she wasn't doing it more for Max than for the money. But as she became Rosanna, in her mind, her thoughts got so tangled and it felt like things really got strange. Rosanna didn't have a good life before she became Rosanna, the story revolves around her and her thoughts. Her memories from when she was young and the memories that she thinks Rosanna might have had start to become confused in her head, she thinks her and Rosanna are the same person or Rosanna lives inside her. It began to drag for me, and the very ending was not what I was expecting.

Unfortunately I had to DNF this book. I am 41% into it and it moves so slowly. I really wanted to like it and to finish it. But I just can't spend any more time on something I am just not connecting with.

An unnamed woman has the chance to leave her dull existence as a movie theater employee in a small town for the unique opportunity to move to L.A. and work as the body double for the troubled celebrity Rosanna Feld. 
Rosanna has been out of the spotlight for almost a year; no one has seen or heard from her since her rumored nervous breakdown.

The details are handled by a man named Max on behalf of Rosanna.  Our unnamed narrator signs a three year contract that cannot be broken; in exchange for her appearances around the city, she'll receive $100,000 the first year and more the following, with a rent-free L.A. apartment.   The catch is that once her contract is up, she cannot return to her previous life/identity and instead forge a new one.

Her arrival in L.A. is nothing as she expected.  Our narrator spends months locked (literally) in her small apartment wearing Rosanna's clothes, eating only the foods Rosanna eats, all while studying footage to prepare for a public debut.  

When Max determines she's ready to be Rosanna, our narrator is caught up in the lifestyle and fame but nagged by the unanswered questions of what caused Rosanna's breakdown and where she is now.  Is the careful and calculating Max her one true ally or is he a danger to Rosanna and her body double?

An intensely sloooooow burn, The Body Double offers readers a lonely narrator whose isolation and obsession spiral into a dark mystery.  The sense of unease kept me reading but I had the end figured out almost immediately.  Since readers have no idea who the MC was in her previous life (very vague information about parents and foster care is given), it was tough for me to understand her motivations or care about what was happening to her.

This was just an okay read for me but if you're a fan of slow burn mystery/thriller/noir-vibe novels, this is one you may want to consider.

Thanks to Doubleday and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.  The Body Double is scheduled for release on March 3, 2020.

Rosanna Feld is a professional celebrity who has everything but peace of mind. Her loyal employee Max seeks out a doppelganger to take her place for public appearances, giving her the time she needs to heal. At least that's the story he spins for the nameless narrator, a rootless young woman who embraces the unusual role for its glamour and promised payday. She lets herself be locked in an apartment full of Rosanna: her clothes, her magazine articles, her interviews. She willingly submits to Max's increasingly extreme methods, subsuming herself in Rosanna. The claustrophobia is well-executed, but the pacing drags right up to the wham ending.

A strange man finds someone to be the body double of someone else.

The idea of this book is good but over all it felt predictable and flat for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book was a thriller filled with action and edge of your seat suspense. The Hollywood thriller is riveting and will suck you in.

The blurb for this book was intriguing. The actual book fell short.

We have a young woman working a dead end job at a movie theater. She's approached by a wealthy but mysterious stranger. His proposition? With his guidance and training (and she finds out later, plastic surgery and starvation) she will impersonate Rosanna Feld, a starlet who needs a break from the limelight. Her period of employment will last three years and then she is to disappear into obscurity so Rosanna can resume her life. For some odd reason, the young woman jumps at the chance.

The wealthy man, named Max, whisks her to L.A. and puts her up in a shoddy, run down apartment. I don't know about anyone else but this would be a major red flag for me. Max is soon dressing her, instructing her, and even has a doctor come and do surgery on her. This all happens in the apartment. The major setting of this book is the apartment.

Other than a hairdresser and doctor, for a long period of time Max is the only person the nameless narrator sees. I'm no doctor but you can tell that she has the beginnings of Stockholm syndrome. She's like an infant that depends on Max for everything. Her daily life in the apartment is so boring that it's almost maddening to the reader.

Max decides that she's ready to be seen out in public to put her transformation to the test. This goes well and I started to think, okay, this book is about to start building up to something. Now it will finally get juicy.

It doesn't. Max controls who she sees, what she says, where she goes, what she eats. Then after her outings she goes back to the same crappy apartment. Her transformation is a success. People think she's Rosanna. Mentally, she thinks she is Rosanna.

Have I mentioned that we still haven't seen the actual Rosanna? Any guesses as to where she might be?

The characters are one dimensional. The nameless narrator may be a good idea, but this narrator only has tiny snippets of backstory. If you blink or skim, you will miss them. You don't care about her as a person at all. Ever. Not to mention you never have it explained to you why she would ever make such a drastic, life-altering decision in the first place.

The book trudges on and on and just when you think It will build to something exciting, it falls flat. The ending came and was not only confusing but it was as flat and monotone as the rest of the book.

Thank you to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book.

This was a highly anticipated read for me. I loved the idea of a nameless narrator and the concept behind the book is very interesting, Unfortunately: it did not live up to my expectations and I think there was a lot of missed opportunities to make certain areas of the book more interesting.

Synopsis:
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.

Emily Beyda's Body Double is reminiscent of elements of Hitchcock or Poe. Her dark storyline tempts the reader to toy with the idea of a macabre tableau awaiting discovery. Although the story does seem to drag a bit, Beyda's use of imagery throughout the novel is exceptional. Somewhat less suspenseful than I had anticipated, the quality of the writing was none the less a delight!

Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for the early copy!

I decided to put down thriller because I did not connect with the writing style.

I stopped reading about a third of the way into the book. I was intrigued to see how it would play out but it dragged out too much to the point of being annoying. If it moved more quickly I think I would have enjoyed it more.

Everyone will be talking about this book. Emily Beyda's debut novel, The Body Double, is a destabilizing, immersive fairy tale nightmare. 

With a premise straight out of a tabloid conspiracy theory, our unnamed protagonist is recruited as a look-alike for a famous now-reclusive celebrity, Rosanna Feld. 

She's chosen because she's perfect -- the look is right, and she has no one. At the end of her service, she is promised a new, better life, the freedom to be whoever she wants to be. But will she make it that far?

There's truly not a lot of that happens -- our cast of characters is tight -- but the feeling of dread is real. The thrill and fear inside is a psychological slow burn. It will keep you guessing, make you feel trapped, delusional, make you question everything. 

This thing is well written. I'm often let down by the writing in this genre, but this one kicks it up a notch and feels like I'm reading from an expert at her craft. I can't wait to see what else this debut author comes up with!

I’m giving The Body Double a rather grudging 3 stars because: a) I appreciate what the author tried to do here and b) I did finish it.

The Body Double may give readers trouble. Out of the first 30% of the book, approximately 25% is spent stuck in an apartment with one or two characters. During this time, our main character thinks, rehearses, watches videos, reads, and occasionally eats. That’s a huge chunk of the book spend doing something that could have been reduced to a chapter. Within that first 30% of book, most readers will know exactly what’s happening with our characters.

What you won’t know is why our main character puts up with it. And you never really get that.

Our main character is a blank slate. She has no personality, no history, and no voice. This is necessary, but oh so frustrating because instead of worrying for her or rooting for her, you’re largely annoyed by her.

I won’t spoil this by telling you exactly what the author intends here (besides it’s kind of obvious early on in the book), but I did appreciate that the author tried. It just takes a defter hand and a bit more restraint than we see in this book.

I like the author’s ideas and would be curious to see what they come up with next.

*ARC Provided via Net Galley

The cover and the story line really captured my attention however I could not get into this book despite many tries. I'm going to wait a bit and see if I can get into this at another time. Thank you for the advanced copy.

This book was nuts and I loved it! THE BODY DOUBLE is a thrilling tale of a young, unnamed woman, who is recruited by a mysterious man to become an LA heiress and handbag designer's body double. However, the more we learn, the more sinister it feels. She'll have to leave her entire past behind and eventually inherit 100 million dollars -- but to do so, she must become a completely new person and live a solitary life.

The reader certainly goes on a journey with the main character. We learn things as she does, and as she is cooped up in an LA apartment waiting to learn what she will be asked to do (including plastic surgery and starving herself) the unsettling feelings start to slowly creep in. Beyda does a masterful job building tension and shocking us at the most unexpected times. I felt like I was living inside of a Hitchcock movie in all the best ways. The ending delivers as well, and I cannot wait to read more from Beyda in the future.

The Body Double is an intriguing mystery filled with suspense following a young woman who is hired as a body double for a reclusive Hollywood star. The premise is fascinating. The story is a bit of a slow-burner with a claustrophobic atmosphere. It feels uncomfortable at times. Highly recommended to readers looking for something different and aren't afraid to feel unsettled.

This cover, and subject matter, are really intriguing. The reader gets pulled into this creepy but engaging story. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to review this book!

A girl is hired to serve as a celebrity's double in the public eye. And a girl has no name. 

She is taken to LA, trained to become Rosanna (the celebrity) and eventually starts making public appearances as her.  The book is narrated from the point of view of the nameless double and it is slow paced. 

The novel does not have a lot of dialogue and, at times, there were 4-5 pages describing the thoughts of the nameless narrator, a lot of instropetion, and not much interaction with other characters or events to advance the plot.

You might be able to predict what is going on here at the beginning of the novel, it is not hard to figure it out.  Overall, it was ok.

ARC provided by Publisher via Netgalley

The cover and premise of The Body Double captured my interest right away. I love thrillers, and "girl-next-door finds herself in an unexpected situation" is always a fun topic for suspense. Unfortunately, the story started out as a slow burn and didn't quite go anywhere for me. The narrator is pretty relatable at first, but I found myself losing interest as things progressed, and eventually ended up skimming the story until the ending when the "twist" occurs (which is kind of predictable).

It's hard to write a thriller with a truly original twist, but some of my favorite thrillers have unique storytelling formats. Or unforgettable characters. Or a mystery so good that you lose yourself in it. The Body Double had potential, but in the end it just reminded me of better stories that have already been told, like Black Swan, Vertigo, and Mulholland Drive.

So, I read some of the reviews for this one ahead of time as I couldn't remember what it was about before reading. I went into it thinking I might not like it, and finished it in one sitting!!
Fatal Attraction meets Single White Female and then some - I did kinda figure out where it was headed before ending, but the end was still a surprise! I really enjoyed this and recommend it for those who like thrillers, mysteries and fast paced twists!