How did The Hollywood Assistant end? | May Cobb (plot summary and ending explained)

This is a spoiler-filled review of The Hollywood Assistant by May Cobb. Here I’ll explain the ending and unpack all of the juicy details of this steamy, soapy summer thriller! If you are looking for an unspoiled review, head back to my main page where I have a spoiler-free review. Stop back here when you’re done!

What is The Hollywood Assistant about?

Cassidy Foster is heartbroken, stuck in life, and getting a little too obsessed with plants. When a well-connected friend gets her a gig as an assistant to famous Hollywood couple, Marisol and Nate Sterling, Cassidy decides she could use a change of scenery and moves to L.A.

The Sterlings are warm and welcoming. A perfect couple. All Cassidy has to do is be available a few hours a week for errands. In return, she has access to luxury. Designer clothes. A sparkling pool. Great pay. When Nate takes interest in her, asking her to read scripts he’s written, Cassidy thinks this could be the key to kickstarting her writing dreams.

As their business relationship grows, so does their attraction. Nate is sexy, talented, and Cassidy can’t believe her luck. Clearly, Marisol doesn’t know what she has. Maybe that’s why the two are always fighting when they think Cassidy isn’t around. But Cassidy learns she was hired for a different purpose.

The Sterlings aren’t the perfect couple. Marisol isn’t the perfect wife. And when one of them is found dead, Cassidy becomes the perfect suspect.

Why does Cassidy take the assistant job?

There is a lot we are going to learn about Cassidy. Several months before the job offer, Cassidy had her heart broken by a man named Carter. Cassidy is a wreck. Her best friend Lexie is supportive, but wants Cassidy to move on. After months of pining over Carter, Lexie is ready to give Cassidy some tough love. And she does this in the form of a fresh start—a job in LA (where Lexie lives and works in film production) and a great deal on an apartment. Cassidy doesn’t know much about Marisol and Nate Sterling, which makes her perfect for the job.

The Cassidy we meet at the beginning of the novel is heartbroken but sympathetic. She feels sad when she sees couples with their babies out walking, and nostalgic when she disassembles the bed she now associates with Carter. But there are hints already that this may be a bit over the top–Cassidy demonstrates herself to be obsessive from page one. Cassidy and Carter dated six months, but you would think they dated six years. Perhaps that early honeymoon phase heading to a break up is worse than a longer relationship, though. A serotonin crash!

What’s up with the Sterlings?

Pretty early we can tell that there is something weird about the Sterlings (though I assume most people in Hollywood are a bit off). While Marisol is warm and welcoming, Nate came across as hot and cold. Cassidy would overhear him speaking unfavorably about her to Marisol. But when they are alone, Nate would shower Cassidy with attention. Eventually, Nate gives Cassidy scripts to review (which she loves) and shares about a script he is writing called A Kept Woman.

Marisol and Nate’s relationship was bizarre, to say the least. Sometimes they are having intercourse in the middle of the day where Cassidy continues to stumble across them, other times they are in screaming matches (which Cassidy also continues to stumble across). Marisol’s confidence is admirable though. She’s emotional, but she’s also level. She doesn’t seem to be overly flustered by Nate and accepts him as he is. At least it appears she does…

What’s going on between Cassidy and the Sterlings?

Cassidy is a bit of a voyeur! She’s stealthily watching them fight, make love, and everything in between. At first it seems accidental and as though she is embarrassed when she comes across them, but at a certain point it seems like she’s doing this on purpose. Cassidy, you little freak! I loved it.

Cassidy is obsessed with both of the Sterlings in different ways. She craves pleasing them. With Marisol, Cassidy walks the line between admiration and jealousy. With Nate, Cassidy wants the attention and attraction of a man. I’m not sure what Cassidy expected to happen with Nate, but she was smug when he would flirt with her behind Marisol’s back.

It bothers Cassidy that Marisol isn’t jealous of her at all, even when Marisol finds out they were spending time together. Once things go too far and Marisol gets cold towards Cassidy, she panics. So which Sterling is the one she would choose? Hard to say. Cassidy craves Marisol’s respect, but she also craves Nate’s attention.

What is the tipping point?

After a few weeks, Nate confesses that he really hired Cassidy to spy on Marisol. He suspects she is cheating with a man named Andreas, and he wants Cassidy to follow her. It’s not hard to find the answer, because on the first time Cassidy is following Marisol she comes across her going into Andreas’ house. Another time she spots them making out (and doing some under-the-table things) at a restaurant while Cassidy is comically hiding behind a plant. As I said–Cassidy is a bit of a voyeur!

Things heat up between Nate and Cassidy the more evidence she finds of Marisol’s affair. But when Marisol walks in on them in the pool, she coldly dismisses Cassidy and sends her home. The next day she tells Cassidy that sometimes to stroke men’s egos, you have to put on a bit of a show. This is how a woman stays in control.

Later that day, Nate asks Cassidy to go on a date. (this was actually shocking—these people are famous; don’t they worry about the paparazzi?) The date is interrupted when Marisol breezes in early and she and Nate go out to celebrate her new role. A disappointed Cassidy goes home. On Monday, Nate tells her that he and Marisol are going to work on their marriage, and asks her to take the week off.

Where has her BFF Lexie been?

I haven’t said much on Lexie because she has been in Prague the whole time that Cassidy has been in LA, but she does play a big role in the story. The two keep up over text, but Cassidy is shocked when she discovers that Lexie is unexpectedly back from Prague. How could she not know?

On a girl’s night, Lexie spills some piping hot tea. She came back because she is worried about Cassidy. She thinks Cassidy is becoming obsessed with Nate (she is) and this is concerning because it is a pattern. Lexie drops a bomb on us—it turns out Cassidy and Carter weren’t in a relationship at all. They only dated for two weeks—not six months. Cassidy pretended to still be together with Carter for months. Things escalated enough that Carter had to file a restraining order against Cassidy. Yikes! Now we get why Lexie was worried about this affair with Nate.

Why are the police outside of Cassidy’s apartment?

Throughout the book we see snippets of Cassidy several weeks after starting work for the Sterlings worried when she sees the police coming to her door. When that timeline finally arrives, it turns out that one of the Sterlings has been murdered—but which one?

Let’s go back a few days—after Nate tells Cassidy to take a week off, Cassidy is furious at his rejection. She follows Marisol to Andreas’ house again. This time she gets full on explicit photos of the cheating, and she sends them to Nate’s phone. When the police arrive to question her, she learns Nate has been murdered. Cassidy is shocked to learn that the police suspect her, not Marisol.

Why do the police suspect Cassidy?

There are a few reasons the police focus on Cassidy, but the biggest one is that Cassidy was seen spying on their house around the time of the murder. (Girl, when will you learn that he is just not that into you??) Cassidy swears she spotted Marisol and Nate arguing, but the police don’t believe her. It seems Marisol had a rock solid alibi and multiple witnesses to vouch for her being at a hotel restaurant.

How could Cassidy have seen her drive home and get into a fight with Nate? Cassidy is certain of what she saw. The police don’t buy it and it turns out Lexie doesn’t either. In fact, Lexie tells them about Cassidy stalking Carter, so now it’s a pattern. Add to that Cassidy texting Nate angrily and sending the photos of the cheating–things don’t look good for Cassidy…

When Cassidy sees Marisol’s body double Jessica, she suddenly realizes that Marisol actually could be in two places at once, as long as one was actually her body double, Jessica. So which one did it? The police take Cassidy to the station and search her house. They have texts she sent Nate that make it clear she was obsessed with him and threatening him. Cassidy lawyers up, but Lexie isn’t convinced Cassidy is innocent (I wouldn’t be either). After a few drinks, the two go to the Sterlings’ house to investigate. At the Sterlings house, the two spot Jessica and Marisol together through the window. Suspicious…

How does it end?

Cassidy happens to see a text come through Lexie’s phone thanking her for renting a black Mercedes convertible. That’s the same model that Marisol drives and that Cassidy swore she saw her in right before the murder. Weird… Back at Lexie’s house, Cassidy finds a photo of Nate and Lexie together taken in 2019, which was before Nate and Marisol met. Lexie is the crazy ex-girlfriend that Marisol told her was stalking Nate.

How did Lexie never tell Cassidy this? Lexie planned to leave Harry to be with Nate. When Nate ghosted Lexie after he met Marisol, Lexie was furious and began to spy on them. She was the one to discover the affair with Andreas and send the note to Nate warning him. When she saw the assistant job, she convinced Cassidy to take it so she could spy on them.

Lexie was furious when Cassidy told her Nate asked her on a date, and came back to the states. She snuck a look at Marisol’s planner, rented the car, and got a wig to impersonate her. It was actually Lexie who Cassidy saw fighting with Nate. When Nate wouldn’t accept her threats about Marisol cheating, Lexie strangled him and set up Cassidy to take the blame. The two fight, and Cassidy shoves Lexie off the deck into the canyon.

So Lexie was behind it all along?

Not exactly… In the epilogue, we learn that Cassidy told Marisol about the script Nate had been secretly writing for her, and Marisol got someone to produce it with herself as the star (the notorious murder case helped). Cassidy is brought on as a script consultant, so she’s on set with Marisol every day. Meanwhile Marisol had a son named Nathaniel—adorable!

In the final scene, Marisol reveals to Cassidy that she planned the entire thing. She did in fact marry Nate for his money, but a prenup meant she wouldn’t get a cent. She hated being a kept woman (ironically the title of Nate’s script for her), so she began cheating on him. She knew Cassidy was spying on her and let her get photos of her with Andreas. Her goal was to drive Nate crazy with jealousy, so she could eventually kill him in self-defense. But it turned out, Lexie did it for her, so she got Nate’s money and became an unkept woman, just as she always wanted.

What did I think?

I don’t know what to say—this book was everything I love about May Cobb’s writing! She pushes that boundary of voyeurism in the best way. The steamy scenes that Cassidy kept peeping on even had me blushing! Cassidy is kind of a freak, isn’t she? And yet, I still was on her side at the end.

Cassidy wants someone to love her—don’t most of us want that? She responds in unhealthy ways when they dump her, and that is the obvious part I can’t get behind. But I think after everything that went down with Lexie (because let’s be for real here, Lexie was the true freak in their friendship!), Cassidy may be on a healing journey. At least I hope so! We even get a hint that Cassidy and Harry may get together (an alternate reading could be that Cassidy is now obsessed with Harry, which is an ending I would also get behind).

Lexie and Marisol were absolutely captivating characters. Unhinged, manipulative, and selfish—those are characteristics they have in common. It’s easy to hate Lexie because Cassidy was her best friend. And let’s be real, Lexie intentionally set Cassidy up to take the fall for everything out of jealousy. This is where Marisol and her differ—they both used Cassidy, but Marisol’s goal was solely about freeing herself, not locking up someone else.

That last scene with Marisol confessing how she manipulated Nate and Cassidy to get exactly what she wanted was deliciously villainous. I loved the scandal of it all! The final scene shows Marisol gorgeous and bathed in candle light, a glint in her eye as she explains how she turned herself into an unkept woman. I loved it!

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