THE FICTION WRITER by Jillian Cantor is a gothic-inspired modern-day mystery with ties to Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. When a writer finds herself falling under the control of a reclusive eccentric billionaire, she starts to wonder what story the man has hired her to write and if he will do anything to control the narrative.
Olivia Fitzgerald is coming out of a long-term relationship and shopping around a third manuscript that won’t sell. After having initial publishing success with her first book, her second book, a retelling of Rebecca, was released to dismal reviews and low sales and Olivia is desperate for work. When her agent calls with an opportunity to ghostwrite a novel for the recently widowed billionaire, Henry "Ash" Asherwood, Olivia accepts the offer and flies to Malibu. Ash lives in a massive cliffside estate and quickly charms Olivia, but when she tries to get a handle on the story he wants her to write, Ash is evasive and stalls. Ash believes Daphne du Maurier stole his grandmother’s story and he says he has the journals to prove it. As Olivia starts looking into his claim, she has difficulty digging up information about the Asherwood family’s past. What are Ash’s real intentions and will Olivia be able to make it out of this job alive?
THE FICTION WRITER starts with a juicy beginning and intriguing premise. Who is this billionaire and what does he really want? The story cleverly retells the Rebecca story with a modern-day Malibu setting. Olivia is an interesting character, although she makes many bad decisions, and blindly allows Ash to manipulate her. Ash is egotistical and unlikeable, and Olivia’s attraction to him is inauthentic. The novel lags a little bit in the middle with repetitious scenes but picks up speed again at the end. There are some interesting writing techniques and parallel storylines, and the passages from The Wife are used effectively to drop clues and provide context. Overall, there are some good twists, turns, and surprising reveals, but the ending left a little to be desired.
From the USA Today-bestselling author of Beautiful Little Fools, Jillian Cantor's The Fiction Writer follows a writer hired by a handsome billionaire to write about his family history with Daphne du Maurier and finds herself drawn into a tangled web of obsession, marital secrets, and stolen manuscripts.
The once-rising literary star Olivia Fitzgerald is down on her luck. Her most recent novel—a retelling of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca—was a flop, her boyfriend of nine years just dumped her and she’s battling a bad case of writer’s block. So when her agent calls her with a high-paying ghostwriting opportunity, Olivia is all too willing to sign the NDA.
At first, the write-for-hire job seems too good to be true. All she has to do is interview Henry “Ash” Asherwood, a reclusive mega billionaire, twice named People’s Sexiest Man Alive, who wants her help in writing a book that reveals a shocking secret about his late grandmother and Daphne du Maurier. But when Olivia arrives at his Malibu estate, nothing is as it seems. The more Olivia digs into his grandmother’s past, the more questions she has—and before she knows it, she’s trapped in a gothic mystery of her own.
With as many twists and turns as the California coast, The Fiction Writer is a page-turner that explores the boundaries of creative freedom and whose stories we have the right to tell.
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