Whisper Network: A Novel

Tagline: “If only you'd listened to us, none of this would have happened.” page 1

It takes place in Dallas in a Nike-like corporation where it focuses on the death of their CEO, Desmond Bankhole. A man named Ames is poised to become the next CEO to replace Desmond and there we read about the 5 women: Sloane, Ardie, Rosalita, Grace, and Katherine, who each have complicated relationships with Ames. There’s rape, postpartum depression, women made to feel inferior, manipulation on women to get ahead in this or any corporation or workplace, shame, and self-loathing or being made to feel they are too blame.

What is worse is at Sloane’s daughter’s school, Abigail told a teacher about a boy who was sexually harassing her. What does that teacher do? He advises Abigail to ignore it and it will go away. At such a young age, society is already teaching girls to stay quiet and just take it. Well, little girls grow up … hear us stand up and ROAR!

This book resonated with me profoundly because the ladies were written to be so vulnerable and emotionally raw. Nobody should ever get victimized. What I also appreciated was one of the women acknowledges what it must feel like from a boy/man’s perspective. How hard it is for them to navigate through the #METOO movement.

What if there was a list of all of the men to watch out for in your city? You would know walking into a new job or any sort of meeting just who you needed to be wary of? All of the men who are creeps, misogynists, condescending or just overall icky. All of the men women currently 'whisper' about to warn each other? A slow burn thriller for the #metoo movement.

Ames Garrett is poised to become the next CEO of Truviv, Inc. Then, suddenly, he takes a tumble from the 18th floor smoking deck.... Was it a suicide tied to being on the bad mens list? Was it one of the (numerous) women he'd burned on his way to the top? We may never know....

I know this has mixed reviews, but I loved it. SO MUCH of the BS that they have to put up with is every day crap that goes on for women. What are you wearing, why is your body language saying, how much did you drink, where did you park, are you alone, etc.... All things that every woman thinks about daily, spun into this novel and used as various motives for a potential murder. I LOVED IT.

Even though this book is about sexual harassment in the workplace and the place women have in the workplace, I had a hard time reading it. It was slow, it beat around the bush quite a lot, and it gave too many details of the characters' internal dialogue, sometimes branching out and not reaching a good stopping point or a place where it made sense.
Too many times the descriptions of the events/actions taking place were blurry and confusing, the kind that only made sense to the writer when writing. I still don't fully understand how Ames died: did he fall? Was he pushed by Ardie? Was Katherine trying to hold him or was she the one to finally push him? The description of the event makes this unclear.
It was also kind of predictable. I knew Ames was the one to die even before the first CEO died.
The book was completely hard to relate to, though. The characters are all good-looking, incredibly wealthy, still young women. As a struggling 30 y.o., I couldn't see past the wealth and the high-position jobs to empathize with them and their fight against sexism, harassment, and the trials of simply being a woman. And in the end, everything got solved with money and the death of the perpetrator, hurray! Such a pity things don't happen like this in real life.