The Body Double

An Austin Chronicle and CrimeReads Most Anticipated Book

"The Body Double . . . takes a sharpened knife to Tinseltown's perverse worship of celebrity and stardom, all of which leads to a surreal blurring of identities. . . . Beyda's tale is creepy, yes, but enthralling, too, and a trenchant reminder that if we wish to remain wonderful people, we might want to stay in the dark." --Austin Chronicle

"Fame and power, artifice and beauty -- Emily Beyda has a lot on her mind, suffusing The Body Double with a power that will linger with readers, bubbling to the surface at every breathless turn of our celebrity-obsessed culture. Her talent and ability to move us, recombining ancient tropes with the media we consume and internalize, makes The Body Double a dazzler, definitely on my personal list of best debuts of the year." --Los Angeles Times

"The Body Double adeptly dissects the lure and, conversely, the demands that come with celebrity life in Hollywood, especially the loneliness of being famous for only being famous. Beyda shines especially in detailing the emotional, nail-biting transition of the faux Rosanna from a nobody to a somebody, and then descending into the madness of no longer knowing who she truly is." --Shelf Awareness

"Haunting. . . . Beyda seeks to give you the dirty underbelly of the L.A. facade -- the obsessive mindset it takes to render the illusion of an easy life. . . . The insistence on visual perfection is paramount. It maintains the illusion that, for a privileged few at least, gold still glitters." --Los Angeles Review of Books