FAKE

A young painter who creates copies of masterpieces for the wealthy gets a mysterious new benefactor.

Emma Caan is a young artist with a real job in a world of fakes: She paints copies of the great masterpieces for wealthy collectors and museums to display so that the valuable originals can be safely hidden away. Still reeling from a family disaster, Emma has only one rule: She refuses to copy any paintings that involve fire. Still, she stays busy, though her job is a painful reminder of how her own painting has stalled. Then Russian oligarch Leonard Sobetsky singles her out and introduces her to the glamorous international art world. He sets her up with a new job at a gallery and a studio apartment, and soon she's traveling to Art Basel Hong Kong and partying late into the night with a variety of dubious figures, including her favorite Instagram influencer. But the question niggles: Is Leonard trying to accomplish something illegal with this generosity? The answer is obvious, though not to naïve Emma. But the biggest problem with this novel is its lack of urgency: It’s a thriller without thrills. The plot stumbles forward too slowly, overly concerned with relaying details about art parties and galleries, what it’s like to fly on a private jet and amass thousands of followers on social media. The luxury impresses Emma—who, as it turns out, is a fantastic saleswoman despite her lack of experience—but grows tedious to the reader, and the characters are a blur of similar qualities. Katz is trying to highlight their shallowness, but they’re so generic that telling them apart is almost impossible. Even the revelation of why fire terrifies Emma is anticlimactic; she never comes alive enough for us to care about her past or future.

A shallow story about intrigue in the luxurious international art world.