BOOK REVIEW: Fake by Erica Katz @harperbooks #fakeanovel #ericakatz #bookreview

A glimpse into a world most of us will never experience—Erica Katz balances suspense, entertainment, and morality in Fake. I didn’t want this novel to end!

About the Book

Can you spot the difference?

Emma Caan is a fake.

She’s a forger, an artist who specializes in nineteenth-century paintings. But she isn’t a criminal; her copies are commissioned by museums and ultra-wealthy collectors protecting their investments. Emma’s more than mastered a Gauguin brushstroke and a van Gogh wheat field, but her work is sometimes a painful reminder of the artistic dreams she once chased for herself, when she was younger and before her family and her world fell apart.

When oligarch art collector Leonard Sobetsky unexpectedly appears with an invitation, Emma sees a way out—a new job, a new path for herself, and access to the kind of money she needs to support her unstable and recently widowed mother.

But every invitation incurs an obligation . . . and Emma isn’t prepared for what’s to come. As she’s pulled further into Leonard’s opulent scene, she will discover what’s lurking beneath the glitz and glamour. When she does, the past she’s worked hard to overcome will collide with the present, making her wonder how much of her carefully curated life is just as fake as her forgeries…

Reflection

Every once and awhile I read a book that delivers on so many levels for me that I struggle to move on to a new book after finishing. After finishing Fake, a novel by Erica Katz, I didn’t want to read anything else. This book takes you everywhere from a tiny rundown apartment with noise blaring in the building to an elite Manhattan gallery to an upscale artist’s loft to a world class art show in Hong Kong. I devoured each page of this book and truly wanted it to continue.

Emma Caan is employed by a company as an artist making fake copies of famous paintings for collectors who want to display the artwork while still preserving the original in temperature controlled, secured safe locations. Though never succeeding at selling her own artwork, Emma is a brilliant forger, able to recreate each brushstroke of masterpieces.

But Emma also lives paycheck to paycheck, barley scraping by. At times it seemed if Emma wondered if she is even truly living her own life. With consultants onsite, she is sure she will lose her job. But an offer she can’t refuse to attend a party with one of her biggest client’s Lenny brings a new career to Emma. Suddenly she’s the assistant director at one of the most prestigious galleries in Manhattan and being paid to continue creating copies of paintings for Lenny.

I found it an interesting play that as Emma got further into this more lucrative and arguably successful career, she herself starts to become a bit of a fake. Not in any major way—I felt the whole time that Emma was a rootable character and still had appropriate boundaries when it came down to it. But as she falls into influencer fame on Instagram and private flights to Hong Kong and a romance with a man who is so deeply and totally using her, we saw Emma learning who she is as a person and who she wants to become.

Ultimately Emma’s story is one of someone who went from living someone else’s life, to living a life that looked good on social media but wasn’t as glamorous or amazing as she projected, to a life where… well you’ll have to read to find out what happens to Emma Caan!

Through it all, Erica Katz not only writes a completely salacious story set in the glamorous and at times dark art world, but she also touches on themes of feminism, finding yourself, testing your boundaries, and ultimately discovering who you really are. At her core, is Emma Caan a fake? You’ll have to read to find out!

Thank you to the publisher for my copy. I loved it so much I bought the hardcover for my collection.