Jillian Beckley is in desperate need of a breakthrough. She recently returned to work following her mother's death only to discover that the website she writes for is shuttering. Any journalist could relate to her plight. Yet it's not only Laura Hankin's ability so accurately to portray the state of an industry blighted by mass layoffs, but also her deft self-deprecating humor that makes Jillian the sympathetic anti-hero readers can't help but root for, even as she makes some questionable choices.
"Every few minutes, men think about sex. Every few minutes, I thought about how old various women I admired were when they made their first mark on the world," Beckley acknowledges during one of her many incisive internal monologues. "Whenever I enjoyed a piece of writing by a woman, I immediately Googled the year she was born."
A Special Place for Women, Hankin's third book (after The Summertime Girls and Happy & You Know It), isn't a navel-gazing novel about an artist trying to make it, however. In the hopes of publishing a story that will relaunch her career, Jillian infiltrates an elite women's club she suspects is involved in the unjust demise of a beloved politician. Yet her investigation leads her to become more entangled in the all-powerful group and question her decision to write a takedown. While the novel focuses on this sisterhood, all the while satirizing white feminism, a compelling love triangle adds to the book's twists. An uncanny tale of romance and friendship, A Special Place for Women is a riveting genre-bender that grapples with the price of belonging. --Gwen Aviles, freelance writer