The women who work at sports apparel brand Truviv have silently put up with varying levels of harassment from their male boss for years. When a spreadsheet documenting the bad office behavior of Dallas men begins circulating, they decide to add his name to the list, unwittingly setting off a chain of catastrophic events.

WHISPER NETWORK is a ripped-from-the-headlines story that transposes the Shitty Media Men list that kicked off Me Too from New York media to Dallas lawyers. It follows that chain of events pretty closely, with a secret spreadsheet that eventually becomes public, and the ensuing debates about what constitutes harassment, how the revelations of these behaviors should be addressed, and how and when women should be believed.

I went into this expecting a thriller, but the main plot is really more of a slow burn. I also inadvertently spoiled one of the big reveals for myself when I googled a term I was unfamiliar with, so learn from me and put your phone down while reading!

I thought this book did a really good job of teasing out all the tangled feelings (most? all?) professional women deal with in regards to meeting society's expectations of them as mothers and employees. It really gets into how you can play by all the rules and still lose because a man will always have more power over you, whether that's professionally, socially, financially, or other.

I do wish there had been a wider range of women represented in this book. There were a couple women of color and one lower income woman, but as far as I could tell, they were all straight, cis, femme-presenting women. Then again, maybe that’s just another way to show that you can conform to the rules in every way and still be punished.