Wren Ashcombe has one shot at Ellery Conservatory, and she's spending it as someone else's understudy. Then her dramatic literature instructor turns out to be Theodore Kessler-the Broadway star who quit at the height of his career and never said why. He casts her in a reading the first week. He defends her when the dorm turns on her. He's also thirty-eight, and her professor, and the only person who believes the rehearsal recording was edited to ruin her. When Wren finds out why Theo really left New York, she realizes the instructor harassing her classmates is the same man who drove him off the stage. Theo has to risk the career he rebuilt to protect the students no one protected him. Wren has to decide whether to take the understudy's bow or refuse the spotlight entirely. The Understudy is a sweeping age gap academy romance about the roles we're given and the ones we take.
