The synopsis of this book is intriguing: Julia, a COO at Tangerine, one of the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley and an inspiration to women across the world, is actually a Russian spy. Julia was selected from an institute in Russia to make her way to a position in Silicon Valley to be useful to her country. But she beats all expectations and becomes a powerful player with incredible access. Now Alice, a woman in IT at Tangerine, runs routine checks and discovers Julia is looking at their users' private information. The book implies that it's a cat-and-mouse spy thriller but it's not and the thrills are non-existent. Instead, it looks at the pressures on women in a tough workplace and their drive to succeed while having a bit of spy drama as a hook. It's interesting enough but will disappoint if one comes in expecting a spy thriller. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

Julia Lerner appears to have it all. She's one of the most powerful business women in America, and she's married to a doctor. She has a beautiful baby girl.

But what if Julia is struggling with a secret?

It's hard to write a review of this without spoilers, but I really enjoyed it. I read it in about 3 sittings, it left me wanting more, and I'd love to see this on screen as I feel it'd make a great (and very bingeable) Netflix series.

An impulsively readable satire of Silicon Valley, with explorations of feminism, racial identity, and workplace dynamics - I loved it and stayed up late to finish. A real standout!

This was a rather disappointing read. For a thriller it really lacked any...well thrills. I had anticipated a juicy cat-and-mouse read filled with tension with two sizzling female leads in the vein of Killing Eve, since the book was compared to Killing Eve in the synopsis but this couldn’t be further from it. Let me know explain.
The first 5% is from the POV of a Russian called Leo who is looking to recruit a female graduate. The story takes 5% to set this up!!! Along the way the author needs to emphasis to the reader that is Leo, that this is a man, so cue paragraphs of him appreciating some views of a plump graduate’s breasts and arse 🤦🏻‍♀️ We are still in 2006 by the way. Then once Julia has been recruited, it then takes another 3% to explain how she’s been setup in America, with jargon that went over my head frankly, and for Leo to preposition to her that he wants her to do some...well actual spying and breaching if privacy, and Julia is like oh-my-god-but-that-is-not-ethical-and-not-what-the-company-is-for, like Girl isn’t that your job? To actually spy? Isn’t that why you came to America? There was no ticking clock. No urgency. What was at stake? There is no deadline or anything, no reason for Leo to extract information. There’s some much fluff and fat on the story, so much time setting stuff up instead of the story just actually starting. My goodness! I skim read the book just to see what would happen and because I didn’t want to waste precious time but still, what a chore it was to get to the end 😩 Ultimately I just didn’t care about the
characters.

Oh, I so wanted to like this book, I promise. I loved the premise. It was so gripping and seemed original, however what I got was less of a cat-and-mouse thriller read and instead a meandering confusing story that wasn’t suspenseful enough to grip me. I also found the female protagonists lacking in depth and without a clear character arc. The Leo character bored me and it wasn’t clear what was at stake. Shorter chapters and more pace would’ve be appreciated.