Who Is Maud Dixon?: A Novel

In her first novel, ALEXANDRA ANDREWS has made me into a fan for life! This <b>4.5 Star</b> thriller is unique, twisty and quickly became my obsession of the week!<b>SUMMARY</b>Florence is an assistant at a NYC publishing house and is kind of barely floating through her life. She has one friend, a crappy Astoria apartment that she shares with roommates, a collection of short stories no one seems interested in and a mother in Florida who she feels less and less compelled to speak with as time passes.When she blows her career up, she receives an offer that seems to good to be true. She is offered the position of an assist to famed iconic author, Maud Dixon! Maud Dixon is the "it" author who, six years ago, wrote a book everyone is still talking about there is even a movie in the works. But, the thing about Maud is that she is super reclusive, in fact, the name is a pseudonym. The only person who knows Maud's actual identity is her agent, the person who set up the interview.Florence is surprised when she is hired and happily accepts. She learns the authors name is Helen and parts of the story are true. She moves into the guest house on Helen's/Maud's property and begins work, transcribing Maud's handwritten partially completed first draft. Soon, they head to Morocco for research and Florence awakens in a hospital a couple days after a car accident alone. And everyone is calling her Helen. Where is Helen? Did she die in the accident? Florence remembers nothing about the accident, but knows she was driving and that she had a few drinks at dinner. Would vehicular manslaughter get prison time in Morocco? Should she go along with it and pretend to be Helen until she figures out what happened to Helen? Could she actually get away with being Helen?? Could she finish Makes book? Could she become Maud?<b>WHAT I LOVED</b>Its a very intriguing premise for a plot. A lot of it was based on trying to determine which parts of a novel, written by Maud Dixon, were actually true. Then there's this reclusive, mysterious author in secluded house and finally, a tension filled trip to Morocco. There was a lot of clever planning and several unexpected twists.The suspense is well done. From the beginning, it seems like one, or both, of the main characters may be a little <i>off</i>. I was pretty certain that something wasn't quite right with at least one of them, but spent the majority of the book trying to figure out exactly how <i>off</i> they were and which one was more questionable than the other.The idea of Florence getting away with stealing Helen's/ Maud's identity is pretty unrealistic. Most thrillers would have glossed over that fact and allowed it to happen without any real issues but this book acknowledged the problems and made her attempt to become Helen/ Maud filled with all the details that would have caused trouble.<b>WHAT I DIDN'T LOVE</b>I really loved most everything about this book. It's just not quite special enough to be a 5 Star for me, very few books are, but there was really nothing about it I didn't like.<b>OVERALL</b>This was such a fun book to read, it had several twists that took it in directions I was not expecting. I would recommend it for anyone who loves a good twisty thriller but is a little tired of the run of mill, generic thrillers.

I was almost exactly 50% into this book when the first signs of life appeared. The first half of the book sets the reader up. The author does an amazing job of getting you to feel contemptuous towards one of the leads while (at least for me) somewhat sorry for the protagonist. She is a weak person with no organic drive in life.. The author leads you to believe this is going to be a story of mentor ship but it takes a juicy twist….I was exactly halfway through this book wondering if anything suspenseful would ever happen. In fact, I was wondering how this book showed up in my recommendation since I generally just read psychological suspense and thriller’s, etc.SPOILER ALERT….As I mentioned above, this book starts off portraying Florence as a weak, educated woman with no real direction in her life. However, when she gets the opportunity to be the assistant of an anonymous writer she thinks it is just the lucky break she needs. Once in that position she is basically doing shit-jobs and demeaned most of the time by Helen.. Until suddenly Helen says they need to take a trip to Morocco for research for her next book.Shortly after arriving in Morocco you will learn more about the accident the you first read in the prologue. It was at this time that the book became exciting. Florence wakes up in the hospital vaguely remembering an accident and realizes that Helen is nowhere to be found. Everyone seems to think she is Helen. Since she recalls the accident and assumed Helen died she decides she will assume her identity. I thought at the time that the events unfolding were obvious. That Helen didn’t die in the accident in Florence’s attempt to steal her identity would be thwarted when Helen would show up. However, this is the great twist in the book as this was all Helen’s plans…Helen had planned out the entire sequence to look like she was dead and she had planned on killing Florence to take her identity. She had changed her will to allow “Florence” to inherit all of her money so she could become Florence and keep all of her money. She had do this we learn because she actually killed her friend and the authorities have pieced it together.However, the real Florence figures this out Just in the nick of time, and after escaping Helen’s attempt of murder she kills Helen and covers it up to look like an accident. Since the real Helen had already changed her will, Florence is set for life… Strange book to read as none of the characters are worthy of being a “good” person… However, this book is definitely worth the read!

Lots of plot twists. Characters were well written and developed. Quite interesting story, however no character was likeable so I found it difficult to be fully invested in what happened to them

I picked this to read after an excellent review in the Sunday Times but I was a little concerned it might be just a ' chick lit ' offering. However I found it a gripping read with an unusual but believable story line which was brilliantly plotted and executed with finely drawn characters which were almost exclusively female !!This was a pleasant change from my normal macho reads

I loved this book...pure, old-fashioned escapism.The twists and turns were very clever and right up to the final page I was not sure how it was going to end. Clever and very entertaining.I hope there is another book from this author in the pipe line?

I`ve given this 2 stars because the use of vocabulary is good and considering that the main characters are American the book doesn`t rely on American style dialogue.If I hadn`t read that the book gets better after the initial "scene setting" I would have given up---part 1 is very tedious. The rest of the book relies on a good plot poorly written with a very rushed ending which was quite obvious from early on. None of the characters are the least bit likeableWhere did Florence get the wherewithall to unscrew a brass towel rail thus saving her life?I`m not sure if this was about identity theft, mental health, jealousy, murder----it could have been done so much better

A great read. The plot is very clever, and I didn't guess a lot of the twists.I felt there were some threads in the first third of the book that didn't really go anywhere, but after the half-way point I was whizzing through the pages. The main characters were satisfyingly unpleasant, but that didn't stop me rooting for at least one of them!