Wow! Such a great start and fascinating debut! It presents great portraits of Singapore’s high society. The angsty romance between Tim and Sam and the outcome of their story also made me turn the pages faster, getting easily connected with those characters.

The dues you have to pay to be the part of socialite scene may cost more than Samantha Song has imagined. She comes from poverty, burying her head into magazine pages to forget the meaning of debt. And now she’s trapped in a PR job, barely making her ends meet as her poor mother still works in a nail saloon even though she still suffers from illness affecting her ability to use her hands properly.

When Samantha’s posh colleague Anya Chen invites her a trendy restaurant that you have to wait for months to have reservation, she sees this invitation as an opportunity. They’ll meet Anya’s wealthy and broken hearted friend Timothy and help him to get over his problems with his girlfriend.

When they meet at the place, Sam realizes Timothy comes from one of the most powerful and elegant families. But he detests to work at family business. His father let him have one year sabbatical. He decides to use this opportunity to work in another industry, creating something meaningful and artsy. There is still three months to end of his sabbatical but his family already started putting pressure on him to go back to family business and his traitor girlfriend supports his family’s decision.

Sam listens Tim’s predicament and remembers how she wanted to have a career as a writer reporting high society’s life style. She makes an offer to Tim that they can get both benefited.

Tim wants to convince his family that he shouldn’t be determined by the background he was born just like Sam who comes from working class needs to have a chance to turn into a socialite. They have only three months to achieve their goals.

Pretending a socialite may be more challenging than Samantha expected especially a secret gossip columnist is out there to dig out more dirt, watching her as a vulture, waiting for her to make a mistake.

Overall: this is fast pacing, captivating, easy read for me! I loved the way how the author wrapped things up. I’m looking forward to read more works of the author in near future.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

Yes, I read this in a day! Yes, I am now obsessed with Sam. The fashion and the food and watching Sam find out who she wants to be. It was pure fun. And I'm in love with the ending. ❤️

Calling all fans of "Counterfeit"! "The Fraud Squad" is.a deliciously scandalous story of high stakes that oozes drama. A must read - well done Kyla Zhao!

This was a great debut novel from Kyla Zhao, I was invested in the characters and wanted these characters to be real. It was a great concept and I think Kyla Zhao had brought it to life perfectly. I was invested in what was going through this book from beginning to end and look forward to the next book by Kyla Zhao.

"Timothy chuckled. “It’s definitely convenient, but I still prefer going to public cinemas. It’s fun seeing everyone reacting at the same time to the same scene. Anyway, make yourself comfortable,” he said, walking toward the minibar in the back of the room. “I’m going to fix us some popcorn and drinks.”

This book is set in Singapore and the author has described it and the people beautifully. This book contains romance. This is a great first novel from Kyla Zhao and I hope she continues to write so I can continue to read her novels!

I wanted to like this book but I just really didn’t. I think the characters seemed so nieve about the real world. While I understand I needed to suspend some reality but I just couldn’t get into it