Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book didn't know what it wanted to be. The blurb introduces us to a female professor trying to achieve tenure status who starts suffering from mystery blackouts. The first few chapters take us into the world of the "Me Too" movement with an obvious parody of the Brock Turner case. Then we take a left into exploring generational trauma and the difficulty in breaking family patterns of alcoholism and enabling. And then... an old White man starts controlling peoples' minds by using cell phone towers to track their brains and alter/delete memories through the magical power of physics, all in order to subjugate women. If that feels out of left field to you, it's no better in the book. The plot is so ridiculous that the author effectively knee-caps any valid points she wants to make about issues of sexual assault and discrimination against women. Instead of keeping the conversation focused on date rape and bias against women in scientific fields- you know, real issues- we spent the bulk of the story fighting an improbable battle against a chauvinistic mastermind who wants to, in the author's words, "create women as he saw fit. All free thinking could be taken away, replaced with submission... a literal dark age where women would have no free will." (Pg. 240). It's so over-the-top, not to mention scientifically impossible, that it almost reads like a parody of feminist fiction. The prose is frequently spiteful towards any man, particularly those who have the misfortune of being white, and the author treats women, all women, as victims, born into victimhood- a perspective that is not only wrong, but skin-crawingly condescending. A few other reviewers noted the frequent discussion of sexual trauma, and I feel it's worth pointing out as well. The detailed, repetitive discussion of violent rape ought to come with a trigger warning at the very least. There was also, to me at least, a personally uncomfortable level of moral ambiguity at the end where all the main characters essentially agree to frame a previous rapist- after spending multiple chapters describing his personal attempts at redemption and self-improvement- for a murder he didn't commit. 'His lawyers got him off of rape charges with minimal consequences', our heroine reasons, 'so they can get him off the hook for murder as well'. Throughout the whole book she's a blogging, Twittering, bloodhound for truth, willing to sacrifice family, friends, marriage, and career to find answers and tell the real story... as long as the story is hers, and not some white man's. Overall the book left a bad taste in my mouth. There are much better thrillers out there without vitriolic prose and ludicrous plots.