The People We Think We Are

Laura Steinberg is a special effects artist working on film sets in Seattle, crafting lifelike prosthetics and cinematic illusions. By day, she builds monsters for the screen. By night, she uses those same skills for a different purpose: impersonating elderly people to recoup money that was fraudulently taken from them. It isn't legal, but the commission help support her mother's expensive cancer treatments.

When Laura takes on a case involving a charming financial advisor siphoning funds from his aging clients, she executes her smartest recovery yet. But the heist draws the attention of the FBI and of Kiran Müller, the reclusive CEO of a biotech company whose daughter was murdered twenty years ago. Müller offers Laura something no one else can: full coverage of her mother's treatment and legal protection, in exchange for one month living at his Lake Tahoe estate to reconstruct the final days of his daughter's life.

What begins as an assignment quickly unravels into a psychological maze. The more Laura uncovers, the more she realizes Müller is not simply seeking answers he is controlling the narrative. Someone in the house is lying. Someone wants her there. And someone knows the truth behind Laura's own past.

As Laura's disguises shift from tool to identity, she must confront the central question at the heart of Müller's offer:
When we become who we pretend to be, what part of the original self disappears?

THE PEOPLE WE THINK WE ARE explores identity, surveillance, deception, and the stories we construct to survive ourselves. I believe it will appeal to readers of Alex Michaelides, Frieda McFadden, Tana French, and Lisa Jewell.

https://youtu.be/pQy7BWKy7Qg?si=SlFCH7z7AiilmFN7