Chandler Baker's Whisper Network starts with eyewitnesses saying what looked like "a giant bird" fell out of the sky. It wasn't a bird but a man, who wasn't super at all. Instead of leaping a tall building in a single bound, he appeared to have just leapt to his death.
The story backtracks to two months earlier, to the day the CEO of Truviv Inc. dies of a heart attack. All indicators point to the man's successor being Ames Garrett, the company's general counsel. Sloane, Ardie and Grace, all lawyers who report to Ames, find this unacceptable. They participate with other professional women in a whisper network, which includes disseminating a BAD Men spreadsheet--the acronym stands for Beware of Assholes in Dallas.
After suffering years of inappropriate behavior from Ames, Sloane puts his name on the spreadsheet. She and her friends make other moves to keep Ames from becoming CEO. Their actions cause a chain reaction, leading up to--but not ending with--that day the body fell out of the sky.
Women everywhere who have ever worked with toxic men might get neck cramps while reading Whisper Network, from nodding fervently at all the truth bombs Baker drops. Take this observation: "Believe it or not, we didn't want to be offended. We weren't sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for someone to show up and offend us so that we would have something to do that day." The social commentary is razor sharp and incisive in its wit, and readers will be loud and clear when recommending this novel. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd