Not so long ago, Lizzie Glass had a successful TV show, a cookbook deal, and a social diary crammed with parties and events. But fame doesn’t stay fresh for long. Her show fizzles, her magazine column is canceled, and Lizzie’s only option is a summer job as personal chef to the Silvesters, a wealthy and eccentric family.   Their beach house is a lavish, beautifully decorated palace on the Jersey Shore, and Lizzie gets to work catering to Kathryn and Jim Silvester’s fashionably restrictive diets. But it’s their twenty-something daughter who presents Lizzie with her biggest challenge—professionally and personally. A self-proclaimed “wellness warrior,” Zoe Silvester has a hugely popular website and app that promotes healthy living and organic, unprocessed foods. Yet Lizzie soon realizes that The Clean Life site has a dirty little secret. In fact, Zoe’s entire online persona is based on a dangerous hoax that runs deep and will damage lives. Exposing Zoe won’t just jeopardize Lizzie’s job and a promising new relationship—it may expose the cracks in her own past.   Sharply observed, witty, and thoughtful, Paige Roberts’ debut novel is a compelling look at one woman’s journey toward reinventing herself—and seeing through the façade of others—to discover the imperfect but sometimes wonderful truth. "Entertaining and incisive... Readers are treated to ample helpings of snappy dialogue and vivid characters. The book contains plenty of humor, but the ending turns more serious, giving readers some food for thought." - Publishers Weekly "Roberts's spot-on debut novel delves into the virtually perfect façade of an internally imperfect family. The ­author also eloquently splashes in a dash of humor...Readers who enjoy novels with cooking themes will laugh and commiserate with Lizzie as she sweats her way through a summer of gourmet requests, grandiose demands, and secrets she learns about almost too late." - Library Journal Paige Roberts is a former journalist who has written for publications such as McSweeney’s, Culinate, and Smithsonian.com. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two children. Virtually Perfect By Paige Roberts KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP. Copyright © 2017 Paige Roberts All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4967-1009-3 CHAPTER 1 Lizzie Glass didn't consider herself a liar. Or at least not a born liar. She hadn't made up stories in kindergarten about how she was secretly a princess in disguise, even though she wanted nothing more than to be just that. As a teenager she never pretended to have smoked pot or made up a fake boyfriend, even when doing so would have saved her a lot of embarrassment. For the most part, any lies she'd told had been crimes of omission. And, okay, yes, some of those omissions had been bigger than others. Some had been pretty massive, actually. Nevertheless, she wasn't in the habit of making declarations she knew were patently false. And yet here she was: dressed in a toga in the New York Botanical Garden, handing out free samples of "cottziki," and lying. She'd been hired by Queensridge Dairy to help with their #FitForAQueen campaign to give cottage cheese a face-lift, and she'd spent the past month trucking around New York and New Jersey trying to convince people cottage cheese wasn't merely diet food for old ladies and health nuts. Today was Mother's Day, the final day of the campaign, and Queensridge had arranged for Lizzie to camp out next to the food trucks on Daffodil Hill, hoping to snag some hungry families taking part in the Botanical Garden's annual Mother's Day party. "Cottziki?" Lizzie offered cheerily, extending a tray of dill-and-cucumber-flecked curds toward a group of passersby. The truth was, Lizzie hated cottage cheese. Hated it. For someone who cooked for a living, despising a food with such passion was awkward, if not unusual. The sour smell, the lumpy texture ... she always felt as if she were being asked to eat someone else's vomit. Every time she looked at the samples of cottage cheese tzatziki in those little plastic cups, she cringed. She had no idea why she'd taken this job. That wasn't true. She knew why. It paid, and she needed the money. And as long as someone out there was willing to exploit her former fame, she was happy to cash the check. There had been far fewer of those checks lately, as her television days drifted further into the past. Recently, even her personal chef gigs had started drying up, leaving her with a single client, who was demanding and impossible but who paid on time and in full. And of course there was the monthly column with Savor, but her contract was nearly up, and the magazine had recently appointed a new editor in chief, who'd spawned rumors about a "total magazine makeover." So it had come to this: pushing a food she couldn't stomach onto strangers, telling them it was healthy and glamorous and they absolutely had to try it. "Cottziki?" Lizzie repeated as another crowd walked past. This