My brother-in-law plans to be a screenwriter, so he’s currently taking classes at the local college as well as at UCLA. As a part of his classes and because he loves them, he is regularly watching movies (shocking, I know). This weekend, he invited me to watch The Palm Beach Story with him because he had recently watched It Happened One Night, starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, and it immediately made his top five.

If you’ve never seen The Palm Beach Story, and odds are you haven’t since it was released in 1942, the description on Amazon will give you an idea: “The captivating Claudette Colbert stars as the frustrated wife of struggling engineer Joel McCrea. In a seemingly amicable agreement, Colbert hops a train to Palm Beach where divorces come easy.

Desperate to escape a group of obnoxious millionaires on the train to Florida, Colbert hides out in a sleeping car where she meets, unbeknownst to her, one of the world’s richest men (Rudy Vallee) who is relentless in his attempt to romance her. Upon their arrival in Palm Beach, Colbert is met by her husband who has come to claim her back only to find that Vallee’s man-crazy sister (Mary Astor) is after him! The foursome’s story unfolds through intensely humorous dialogue, flirtatious situations, and a splendid soundtrack.”

I don’t watch a lot of old movies, but I enjoyed this one. It was silly, fast-paced, hilariously written, and we laughed a lot. But one thing I noticed was how much focus was put on the heroine’s reliance on her feminine wiles to get what she wanted. And it wasn’t even subtle. She literally talked about the figure of a woman and that there are ways for a woman to get the things she needs. There was also a huge focus on a woman marrying well, being a good cook and housekeeper, and her abilities as a mother. It made me think about how much times have changed since 1942, how much movie heroines have changed, and how much work we still have to do.

Women have made great strides in recent years. The idea of the casting couch is hopefully gone for good, and women now feel empowered to reveal when they have felt or been sexually harassed. #MeToo has begun to make a difference even though we still have a long way to go. Many men don’t objectify women, but we won’t be at the finish line until no one feels objectified—male or female.

A while back, I read a novel that played heavily on the #MeToo movement. It pretty steadily made the rounds of a good number of my reader friends. It made the New York Times Bestseller List pretty quickly, and it could fast become a favorite for just about anyone. It was definitely worth revisiting here.

Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for Whisper Network by Chandler Baker

352 pages
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: July 2, 2019

Publisher’s Description

Sloane, Ardie, Grace, and Rosalita have worked at Truviv, Inc. for years. The sudden death of Truviv’s CEO means their boss, Ames, will likely take over the entire company. Each of the women has a different relationship with Ames, who has always been surrounded by whispers about how he treats women. Those whispers have been ignored, swept under the rug, hidden away by those in charge.

But the world has changed, and the women are watching this promotion differently. This time, when they find out Ames is making an inappropriate move on a colleague, they aren’t willing to let it go. This time, they’ve decided enough is enough.

Sloane and her colleagues’ decision to take a stand sets in motion a catastrophic shift in the office. Lies will be uncovered. Secrets will be exposed. And not everyone will survive. All of their lives ― as women, colleagues, mothers, wives, friends, even adversaries ― will change dramatically as a result.

“If only you had listened to us,” they tell us on page one of Chandler Baker’s Whisper Network, “none of this would have happened.”

************

Capitalizing on the focus of the #MeToo movement, Chandler Baker’s Whisper Network is a fast-paced story about sisterhood, the power of women, the secrets they tell themselves and each other, and the bravery it takes to come forward about sexual misconduct in a law firm dominated by men. The chapters about each of the women are interspersed with snippets of witness statements and depositions.

We know from the start that someone has plunged to their death from an upper floor of an office building. We can suspect who it is, although we don’t know for certain, and the narrative flips between making you think it’s a suicide and making you think it’s a murder. I thought this was well-done with great dialogue and a realism about corporate life. Honestly, it made me grateful that I work for a firm where this kind of thing is talked about openly and absolutely not tolerated. That said, I know there are still places where management turns a blind eye.

I saw a couple of reviews that blasted the author for being a copycat of Big Little Lies. I agree that this has a lot of similarities but in a different environment. That didn’t really bother me because I LIKED Big Little Lies, and as I said, this is well-done. To me, I don’t mind if a story is similar to something else that I like if the execution is different.

The only reason I knocked this down to 4 stars was that I really didn’t like the very end. I was not at all happy with the resolution to the story. I won’t give it away because I certainly didn’t expect it, but I would have liked an alternative version.

Thanks to my friend Dianah for sending me one of the ARCs that she won in a giveaway. This was totally worth reading a hard copy, which I haven’t done in a very long time. 😊

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