Debra Cowdry keeps all the rejection letters from literary
agents and publishing houses in one specific drawer in her apartment. She works
in a law office as a typist, and on her lunch breaks, she often sits at her
favorite bookshop. The window display and all the tables are decorated with
books written by men. Bestsellers with glossy covers, and a woman's name on
only a few of them. When her best friend, Sheila, jokes and says she should
send in her manuscript under a male pen name, Debra takes it to heart. What
kind of response might her book get if she were to do this?
She receives a letter back from an agent, and when Lisa, the agent's assistant, lets Debra into the room, an unexpected thing happens. The book is picked up by a publishing house with Alec Winterbourne as the author. There are only three people who know Alec Winterbourne isn't a real person. They keep her secret, and Debra publishes more books under this pen name.
Then Debra meets a man named Alec Winterbourne. He's an architect, and he's funny and charming. He's handsome and smart, and in no time at all, Debra has fallen in love with him. When she writes a book that garners a lot of attention, requests for interviews start pouring in. She and Lisa, who has stepped in as her agent, let Alec in on Debra's secret. He begins filling in for Debra, pretending to be the person who wrote her books. Things work—sometimes smoothly, sometimes less so—until they don't.
This was a very entertaining read based on a very interesting premise. I wasn't sure why Lisa—the assistant turned agent—couldn't help Debra when things turned sideways, but maybe there were reasons I didn't have figured out. There were a couple of twists that surprised me. This was very different from van Houten's Everything He Never Told Me, but every bit as engaging.
I gave this book four stars. This title releases on October 6, 2026.
