Fake Like Me

Grand Central Publishing, June 2019

A young painter tracks the mysterious life and death of her role model in this haunting work of literary suspense, a finalist for the 2020 Edgar Award for Best Novel.

Glitteringly compelling
Booklist [STARRED REVIEW]
Exceptional
Publishers Weekly [starred review]
Glittering with wit and mystery, FAKE LIKE ME is more than an immensely readable portrait of an artist — it shatters expectations with pointed satire and structural daring.
Hyperallergic

“Part thriller, part performance art and wholly revolutionary, FAKE LIKE ME confronts American art culture with female bravado.” — BookPage

Baltimore Magazine's Best Book of 2019
A Cosmopolitan June 2019 Must-Have
A Fortune Summer 2019 Travel Pick
A HelloGiggles Best Book of June 2019
A Refinery29 Best Book of June 2019
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of Summer 2019
A CrimeReads Best Crime Books of the Year (So Far)
A Toronto Star Hot Summer Thriller Pick

A must for those with an artistic bent, a sheer reading pleasure for all.
Library Journal [Starred Review]
A haunting, dizzying meditation on identity and the blurred lines between life and art.
Kirkus [starred review]
FAKE LIKE ME is an impressively intelligent thriller ... Expect insightful paragraphs about the creative process sprinkled among the propulsive mystery.
Refinery29, Best Books of June
[A] page-turning story about art imitating life.
The Palm Beach Post
Bourland has an astonishing ability to write viscerally about art, culture, class, and landscape, for a work that’s bound to be one of the summer’s biggest crime/literary crossovers.
LitHub
In Bourland’s decadent twist on the classic campus novel, a group of struggling artists succeed beyond their wildest dreams, but at what cost? Gloriously mordant and glittering.
— Courtney Maum, author of TOUCH
This book delivers the perfect smart-thriller paradox: you’ll be driven to finish the twisting plot, but you will not want the narrator’s wise observations to end. So drop everything to follow Bourland’s brilliant narrator to Pine City, the upstate artist colony with its crumbling camp buildings and secret histories. You will not see the art world—or a woman’s place in it—the same way again.
— Maria Hummel, author of Still Lives
The process creators go through for the sake of their art ranges from obsessive to self-destructive, and that ideology is escalated with Bourland’s cutthroat prose... The unrelenting threat hovers through the plot and rigidly keeps the reader’s head just above water until the end approaches.
Fangoria, Issue 3
FAKE LIKE ME ... is the work of a writer who has hit her stride.
The Toronto Star, Hot Summer Thrillers
A cast of familiar-yet-eccentric characters plays out multiple storylines—a bizarre mystery (why did the young and famous New York artist Carey Logan drown herself in a lake?), a love story (really, a few), an artist’s coming of age—but at its core, it’s a penetrating, insightful discourse into what it means to be a practicing artist navigating the cut-throat art world.
Baltimore Magazine
Whip-smart
Thrillist
Bourland [is] back in fine form ... [FAKE LIKE ME] promises to be the art mystery of the season.
Crime Reads, Best of June
Meet ‘art satire thriller,’ your new favorite genre.
Hello Giggles, 10 Best books of June
With her trademark flair and razor-sharp attention to detail, Barbara Bourland offers the reader an incisive exploration of the tension between the desire to make art and the desire to make money. FAKE LIKE ME is satirical, brilliantly realized, and has a twist you simply won’t see coming...
— Louise O'Neill, author of ONLY EVER YOURS
A ridiculously propulsive ‘du Maurier-esque’ literary thriller and a warning about the deadly consequences of stifling female expression. Could. Not. Put. It. Down.
— Lisa Gabriele, author of THE WINTERS