Cover Story

Told through diary entries, emails, FBI transcripts, and other documents, the novel follows two intertwined narratives set in the worlds of New York fashion journalism and literary publishing in 2017 and 2018. One belongs to a young woman who identifies herself as Lora Ricci, an aspiring writer and magazine intern; the other tracks the FBI's investigation into a con artist operating under multiple aliases.

The story opens with an FBI transcript dated March 2017. Carolina Kopp, the deputy editor at ELLE magazine, reports suspicions about Cat Wolff, a contributing editor whose background does not hold up to scrutiny. Cat's Instagram followers appear to be bots, she lists The Plaza Hotel as her address despite a modest salary, and a background check links her name to a woman living in Buenos Aires. FBI Special Agent Jenée Parker opens an investigation.

A young woman named Lora Ricci then applies for a summer internship at ELLE. In her diary, Lora explains she is an NYU student from a working-class family in Allentown, Pennsylvania, who dreams of becoming both a magazine editor and a novelist. She harbors a secret: She earned poor grades her first year, lost her scholarship, and cannot afford to return in the fall. She has been lying to her parents about all of it. Meanwhile, a woman named Olesya Dorokhova emails her brother Nikolay in Russia, describing herself as trapped in her hotel suite with the FBI closing in, desperate to escape, and frustrated that she will never be recognized for her accomplishments across her many identities.

At ELLE, Lora feels the class divide between herself and the other interns, who come from wealthy, well-connected families. She becomes captivated by Cat Wolff, whom the others describe as an Austrian heiress. Cat approaches Lora after a humiliating staff meeting and invites her to help research a feature on women-led fashion startups. Behind the scenes, Cat has Nikolay confirm Lora is not an undercover agent, while the FBI separately places its own operative at the magazine.

Cat's driver takes Lora to Cat's penthouse suite at The Plaza, where Cat shares a fabricated backstory about growing up in Vienna. Cat privately uses Lora's research on venture capital and startup accelerators to advance her own fraud, pitching a fake app to Y Combinator, a prestigious program that funds early-stage companies, and asking whether investments can be received in Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that enables anonymous transactions.

Lora confides in Cat about her financial crisis, and the two exchange short stories, discovering complementary talents: Cat generates brilliant ideas but executes them poorly, while Lora writes beautifully but lacks strong concepts. Cat proposes that Lora become her ghostwriter, writing stories under Cat's name that will eventually lead to a book deal and launch Lora's career. Lora decides to drop out of NYU. She drives home in August and tells her parents, who react with anger and tears. She leaves without reconciling.

Starting in September, Lora works full-time but discovers Cat never intended to pay a salary. With her lease expiring and no money, Lora agrees to move into the suite's second-floor bedroom, with expenses charged to Cat's hotel account. Cat warns that her father, who allegedly pays the bills, must never learn someone else lives there. Lora's life becomes isolated: She rarely leaves the hotel, has no money of her own, and must remain invisible to staff and visitors.

Cat's financial schemes multiply. She opens credit cards under fake company names, has Nikolay forge websites and documents for fictional startup founders, and purchases 2 million fake Instagram followers for "Sophie Bisset," another of her aliases. She secures fraudulent bank loans totaling over $3.4 million using forged statements and someone impersonating a fictional cosigner. A painful Thanksgiving visit home, during which Lora's family questions Cat's trustworthiness, leaves Lora more estranged than ever.

In December, Nikolay visits from Moscow. FBI Agent Parker follows him from the airport to Cat's suite and identifies Cat Wolff as Olesya Dorokhova, a woman who has not been publicly seen in 15 years. The FBI obtains a wiretap and installs surveillance while Cat and Lora are away on a ski trip.

In January 2018, Lora transforms an old draft into "Horse Girl," a story about a young woman dismissed by a teaching assistant as irrational simply for liking horses. Cat sends it to her literary agent, Margot Fletcher. The FBI discovers that Cat has also been impersonating Daphne Rooney, a reclusive bestselling novelist; Lora had glimpsed a manuscript for a new Rooney novel, The Whale, on Cat's laptop. Olesya spends over $27,000 in Bitcoin on fake page views to ensure the story goes viral.

Published in The New Yorker in March 2018, "Horse Girl" becomes the magazine's most-read short story in a decade. Margot secures a $1.25 million book deal with Penguin Press. Simultaneously, Cat as "Sophie Bisset" presents a fake startup at Y Combinator's Demo Day, securing $850,000 she immediately converts to Bitcoin. Lora grows resentful that Cat receives all the credit and refuses to add Lora's name to the book. While searching Cat's belongings, Lora discovers closets full of wigs, costume pieces, and a fake pregnancy bodysuit.

In May, Cat discovers Lora's diary, is enraged by entries describing Lora going through her closets, and orders Lora out. Weeks later, when Lora returns to salvage their work, Cat reveals she never intended to write the book. The entire scheme was designed to collect the advance and flee. She gives Lora a check for $65,000, but it proves counterfeit.

On May 25, the FBI arrests Olesya at JFK Airport as she tries to board a flight to Moscow, but she incapacitates the escorting agent and vanishes without appearing on any surveillance footage. Lora learns Cat's real identity from news reports. She contacts Margot, identifies herself as the ghostwriter, and secures a two-book deal with HarperCollins: a memoir about her experience, followed by the story collection. She publishes an essay in New York Magazine titled "I Wrote 'Horse Girl.'"

Days later, Olesya appears at Lora's apartment, filthy and desperate. She reveals her real story: She grew up in Moscow, her English mother died by suicide, her father turned violent, and at 14 she dropped out of school to support herself and Nikolay through forged credentials and stolen identities. She progressed through aliases across continents before stealing the real Inge Wolff's identity at a party and becoming "Cat Wolff." She insists she and Lora are fundamentally the same. Lora rejects the comparison but lets Olesya stay the night. In the morning, Lora leaves a note reading "RUN" and calls the FBI, but Olesya escapes again.

Lora agrees to testify against Olesya in exchange for immunity and offers to hand over her diary as evidence. She calls her parents, tells them everything, and plans to move home. In her final diary entry, dated July 2, she expresses gratitude for Cat, acknowledging that Cat believed in her and taught her to write. She plans to collect her $300,000 advance from HarperCollins the next morning and take the train to Pennsylvania.

The novel's final pages upend everything. A receipt from Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, shows "Lora Ricci" converting the entire advance into Bitcoin on July 3. A Lyft receipt shows a ride to JFK. A letter to New York Magazine from Tom and Carol Ricci states that their daughter, the only Lora Elizabeth Ricci ever enrolled at NYU, has been in a coma at a Philadelphia hospital after a car accident, and they believe someone stole her identity. An Aeroflot boarding pass shows "RICCI / LORAELIZABETH" departing for Moscow on the same flight Olesya had told Nikolay she would take. The narrator has never been the real Lora Ricci. She has used a stolen identity all along and has fled to Moscow with the money, leaving unresolved the question of who she truly was and whether she and Olesya were working together or were the same person.