What Chandler Baker serves up in Whisper Network, her adult debut, is part soapy shocker...and part legal thriller...Think Big Little Lies meets the famous 2017 list of men in the media industry accused of sexual harassment...Baker, who practices law professionally, protects her protagonists like a pit bull defense attorney ... The most compelling voice of all belongs to the insightful and pragmatic Rosalita Guillen,...Rosalita’s life story is emotionally wrenching, and you long to know more about it. Her insights into the men and women of Truviv offer a reprieve from Paleo diets and office cake. You want to get back to the story, maybe even rewind the clock and see Rosalita cope with her nightmarish situation day in, day out. After all, every whisper network relies on people speaking up as individuals, sharing their experiences. The same applies to this Whisper Network, too.

A strong feature of Whisper Network is the unnamed narrator at the beginning of each chapter ... Functioning as a kind of #MeToo era Greek chorus, these sections are vivid and compelling, offering an insider’s perspective on the true cost of female ambition in the workplace ... Far more interesting than the takedown of a caricatured bad boss is the way women at Truviv use skills honed on the job in order to form alliances, create opportunities and protect each other. Read this novel for a spirited take on the rage that simmers just below the surface of today’s woman in the corner office, the cubicle or the break room.

The book fills many of its pages with generalizations about corporate women ... Tarana Burke, the initial founder of the #MeToo phrase, has critiqued the movement for lifting up wealthy white women, while leaving women of color behind. We see this dynamic play out in Baker’s version of the story. Ardie’s identity as a Latina is glossed over and comes across as only accessory ... Throughout the novel, the description of the women’s day-to-day encounters with sexism and misogyny are rampant, but the same space isn’t given to the trauma that bleeds into the way they navigate their relationships, sex, and friendships. Baker doesn’t show us how each of them faced their abuser every day for years, without experiencing PTSD or pausing their careers ... Reality, of course, is much messier than Baker’s depictions ... Baker’s epilogue, an impassioned speech about women speaking up, is hardly as satisfying as one that depicts the complicated aftermath of sexual harassment. Asking the reader to believe something that probably wouldn’t happen in real life might be how fiction works, but here, it is particularly unbelievable.

In the midst of a police investigation and meetings involving suits and countersuits, Baker works in succinct statements about the quandaries of modern women: torn between motherhood and work, plagued with guilt about nearly everything, suppressing their femininity while being undervalued because of their sex, and schooled in secrecy. These truths serve to bolster the plot, not distract from it, and the result is a compulsively readable mystery with a strong message. Don’t miss it.

Attorney Baker's debut is a thriller, a murder mystery, and an anthem for any woman who has ever hit a glass ceiling, been the brunt of sexual innuendo, or felt harassed in the workplace. Smart, articulate, and witty, it will resonate with a huge audience. Highly recommended.

Viciously funny and compulsively readable, Baker’s first adult novel is a feminist thriller for the #MeToo era ... Deliciously campy, the novel is part whodunit and part revenge fantasy, and Baker’s...fondness for over-the-top foreshadowing only serves to enhance the delightfully ominous mood. It’s a breezy page-turner of a book, which is the brilliance of it: Under the froth is an unmistakable layer of justified rage. Over-the-top in all the right ways.

YA author Baker...makes her adult debut with an engrossing, bracingly funny thriller ... Baker, a corporate lawyer and the mother of a toddler, clearly knows her protagonists’ conflicting professional and personal worlds, though she goes a bit overboard with plot twists toward the end. This empowering novel is sure to resonate with many readers in the #MeToo era.