[The Receptionist] has all the fascination of a train wreck…The malicious actions of these angry, narcissistic people are appalling, but that won’t stop readers from turning the pages to see what happens to them next.” —Publishers Weekly
“The perfect maelstrom of revenge, crazy, and absolute rage. The Receptionist has it all…[Kate Myles] is definitely one to watch.” —Mystery & Suspense Magazine
“A fast-paced, gripping tale…” —Authorlink
“This eerie, suspenseful saga keeps readers guessing.” —Woman’s World
“The slick, ruthless world of Hollywood comes alive in Kate Myles’s riveting debut.” —The Big Thrill
“Kate Myles takes no prisoners and leaves no skin on the bone. The Receptionist is a riveting and disturbing evisceration of twenty-first-century Hollywood greed and ambition. Überagents, self-improvement gurus, desperately ambitious actors—none of these denizens of sun-drenched Los Angeles are safe from Kate Myles’s scalpel-sharp pen.” —Christopher Rice, New York Times and Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Burning Girl series
“A dark, gripping tale that won’t fail to captivate.” —Robert Bryndza, New York Times bestselling author
“The Receptionist is the best kind of guilty pleasure. Unlikeable characters? Check. Twisty plot? Check. This book has a pervasive sense of dread throughout, which made me turn the pages even faster. I couldn’t wait to see how it ended.” —Samantha Downing, USA Today bestselling author of My Lovely Wife and He Started It
“The Receptionist is compulsively readable and deliciously disturbing, perfect for readers who enjoyed Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Myles has written a genuinely unnerving thriller that I couldn’t put down.” —Jess Lourey, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Unspeakable Things and Bloodline
“The Receptionist starts as a scathingly funny, deftly observed comedy of Hollywood manners—then twists, changes gears, and gathers the tense, heart-palpitating momentum of a runaway train.” —Jon Evans, Arthur Ellis Award–winning author of Dark Places and Invisible Armies
“Kate Myles’s The Receptionist is a terrific thriller and a mesmerizing character study; I read it faster and with more pleasure than any crime novel I’ve picked up in months.” —Scott Phillips, bestselling author of The Ice Harvest
“The Receptionist is a freight train, hurtling toward a sheer drop. Kate Myles’s razor-edged debut offers a bitter satire of LA society (or lack of same), told with the pure, pulse-pounding abandon of a 911 call. Myles’s villains are delightfully awful, and her dialogue shines bright and cuts deep, but what makes her a tale spinner on par with the greats, like Patricia Highsmith and Tana French, is her recognition that the most thrilling moment of that fatal train ride comes not from the pounding of the engines or the fiery conflagration of landing but from the moment of weightlessness as you fall.” —Nick Seeley, author of Cambodia Noir
2021-04-14
Television producer Myles’ debut novel anatomizes the ways three points in a stratospheric Los Angeles triangle can screw, and screw with, each other.
Despite their opulent lifestyle, Emily Webb’s marriage to serial adulterer Doug Markham is less like a fairy-tale romance than a strategic alliance between Beyond the Brand, Doug’s market research firm, and RFG Entertainment, the talent agency to which Emily preemptively lured her star client, lifestyle guru Dr. Maryn, when she was at the point of leaving Emily’s old agency. The come-on Emily and Doug dangled was data mining, a neglected revenue stream based on the scads of personal information Dr. Maryn’s clients shared with her. But there are several flies in the ointment. In order to launch his own pet project, a portable EEG that registers its wearer’s levels of engagement with goods and experiences whose merchants would love to know more about, Doug needs more money, so he teams up with tech consultant Erik Powell to sell medical information they’ve stolen from Dr. Maryn’s database. Dr. Maryn continues to have strong opinions of her own, some of them highly ethical, others not so much. Most disruptive of all is Doug’s receptionist, Chloe, whom he sends to Emily hoping that RFG can represent her on the strength of her work with Common Parlance, a pop-up performing troupe. Chloe and Emily don’t bond, but Chloe and Doug do, early and often. When her romance with Doug has run its all-too-predictable course, Chloe is unexpectedly taken up by Emily, who has ideas of her own about how best to turn the situation to her advantage. But so, it turns out, does Chloe.
Myles’ sharp sense of the objects and perks that spell entitlement isn’t enough to save this inflated, overdetailed affair.
