An ambitious tech executive moves from Silicon Valley back to her run-down hometown to run for Senate... but her reasons for doing so are complicated, as is her marriage and the secrets she is keeping. Some of this novel was great and fun, but it started to lose something as it went on. Piazza's reflections on the craziness of modern political campaigns are spot on, but she also devolves into stereotypes that take away from the story. And Charlotte wasn't likeable - I get that she was a complicated modern woman but I still wanted to root for her for reasons other than her opponent being awful. I felt like the author wasn't sure what kind of book she wanted to write - a political satire, a feminist screed, a secrets-and-lies family drama, a fish out of water story, or what. There was no way she could be fully successful trying to do it all. So a mixed bag for me - not terrible but could have been so much better.

This was an incredibly insightful piece of fiction by an author incredibly knowledgeable from her years in journalism. It was sobering to realize how little we want to know about the people running to represent us and how easily we can be manipulated through style over substance. Charlotte Walsh was an incredible character. The things she had to do as a woman to hike her way to the top were a sobering reminder of the things we would never care to ask of a man.

*4 - 4.5 stars*

Charlotte Walsh is an intelligent, strong woman and CEO of Humanity a large corporation, who is running for Congress. I really enjoyed this book and it was a fast paced enjoyable read for me. I really liked Charlotte as a character and I felt that I could really relate to her. As a female, recently moving overseas and living abroad and starting a new job, Charlotte gave me strength and I was rooting for her throughout. She struggles to maintain her relationship with his husband, raise 3 girls, run for Congress, and deal with the media. I really enjoyed the author’s writing style and I will be looking up more books written by her. I highly recommend this book!

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Simon Schuster for allowing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. *

Thank you to Netgalley, Simon and Schuster and the author for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Note to the reader: if "choose your own ending" types frustrate you, you might want to skip this one.

Raise your hand if you are a woman trying to give 110% to every area of your life: husband/SO, children, career and self.
Charlotte Walsh grew up poor with a depressed mother and alcoholic father but with enough drive and smarts to become a Silicon Valley millionaire with three young daughters ages 5 and under. Her husband works for the same company, but Charlotte is the one that has revolutionized it for women employees. When she runs for the Pennsylvania Senate, her husband gives up his position in the company to stay home with the children. While she starts out with the belief she is the "good guy and can make a difference" Charlotte makes choices that end up affecting her relationship with her husband.
This book addresses the "double standard" of men and women: men may have affairs and uses derogatory terms to describe women but women not only have to be squeaky clean but are also judged by their spouse's actions. Throughout the story, the reader will get a sense of the incredible emotional and physical toll, time, energy and money it takes running for a political office. However, even though the reader will live the exhausting campaign trail with Charlotte, this really isn't about a political campaign, it's about a marriage campaign. After several years together, do we grow together or apart? Trust more or less? When resentment builds and communication falters, how do we behave? Everything we do is a choice, And the choices can help us grow or become more distant. We decide how far we will go.
The characters are well developed and the parallel storyline between the campaign, her marriage and her "not-made-for-media" brother are relatable. Anyone that has been in a long term relationship will find themselves agreeing/disagreeing/understanding and possibly re-examining their own relationship.

Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win is a fun, multilayered book that’s ultimately an exercise in frustration.

Our title character is a power player in Silicon Valley. In the wake of her husband’s affair and a bout of ambition, she decides to leave behind her lucrative and successful career to take the next, public-serving/ego-stroking step: politics.

What follows is an exhausting whirlwind of hand-shaking and pie festivals and a rapidly crumbling marriage. We see a strikingly familiar dirty underbelly among lying politicians who are never fully held accountable for their muckraking and anonymous, misogynist trolls.

Piazza has a knack for showing the price of a seemingly fabulous life. In Fitness Junkie, our main character loses so much weight in her quest for a better self that she makes herself ill. For Charlotte Walsh to have it all, she must risk losing that which is most important.

We meet characters with varying shades of dysfunction. Charlotte’s brother could easily be portrayed as an idiotic drunk yokel (and he kind of is, to be honest), but we also get to see a man who honestly tries but just can’t seem to get it together.

What kills it for me is the vague ending.

Hiding the rest of this review behind a spoiler button, though I don’t think my comments are necessarily spoilery since there’s nothing to spoil (re: the vague ending). Nonetheless, I don’t want to ruin any sort of surprise. Click the button to keep reading. Leave it alone to maintain some mystery.

...Mystery which is actually still maddeningly maintained for me, even having finished the book.

This isn’t a conceptual book that merits a vague ending. It’s plot-driven with definitive points along the way. To suddenly abandon the path at a critical juncture shortchanges the journey the reader has come along for. It shortchanges the reader, period.

Up to the end (notwithstanding a small continuity error in the very end which I’m sure will be corrected before the final print), the book is engaging, interesting, and sinks in enough hooks and surprises to keep the reader going.

But the book is clearly called “Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win.” How can the author finish the book without telling us whether she does? In The Night Circus, it would be unacceptable if we saw our characters preparing for the big event, but never actually went to the circus. Or to never see The Animators animating. Or to find out what happened before the fall in Before the Fall.

I get it. I get that the winning goes beyond the campaign itself. But it is the axis around which the entire book rotates. It feels like the author wasn't sure which ending would work best, so she just stopped. It's a shame; the rest of the book is so engaging.

Though mostly enjoyable, I vote for a more definitive ending. This book failed to live up to its campaign promises.

One word to describe this book is EMPOWERING! No author has done it so eloquently about the struggle between politics and everyday life for women. It's not just about politics but the career woman. This doesn't just hit close to home, it's a direct bulleye. This book is a perfect message for women and especially young women in today society. Yes, we can have it all!

I follow politics pretty closely, use reputable (NYT and such) sources and it mostly produced a sort of incredulous disgust in what the world’s becoming. Charlotte Walsh, a 47 year old Silicon Valley exec, a multimillionaire, wife and a mother of three young children, presumably has something of the same reaction, but decides to be proactive about it. So she moves back to her boondock PA birthplace and sets off to win a senate seat. The thing about PA is that it’s a staggeringly backwards state with two small enclaves of civilization, so it has never produced a female governor or a US senator. Charlotte is on a pretty revolutionary mission and she brings to it the same determination which has led her to success thus far, but at the same time she drags herself and her already struggling marriage though something genuinely heinous…the American public attention. The problem with democracy is that it empowers everyone equally, from a moron who’s never took the time to understand a single political platform to someone well educated on the matter, and of course the former hold the majority. So most of the time is dedicated to Charlotte essentially dumbing herself down to appeal to the voters. It’s a very realistic and all the more for it tragic state of affairs. One that to me is nearly incomprehensible….why wouldn’t you want to be represented by someone smarter than you? Anyway, things being as they are Charlotte is set to win the votes previously almost solely bestowed upon a crusty old misogynistic conservative caricature that’s all too archetypal of the present day powers that be. While her marriage implodes. Frankly, I was afraid this would be chicklit (the author’s previous titles didn’t inspire much confidence), but this was determinedly more serious than that, women fiction, sure, but a quality one. Something that’s timely and compelling, something that eclipses relationship challenges, a clever commentary on the modern society…whether it satirizes the lifestyles of the California’s 1% while juxtaposing them to the PA’s countryfried poverty or discusses the ugliness of politics. I’m not sure I particularly liked most of the main characters or related to them, Charlotte’s drive in particular is a complete mindboggler to me and the self flagellation of her endeavor is horrendous and incomprehensible. It also seemed that she wasn’t so much dedicated to becoming the first PA female senator as she was to feeding her ego, the election nothing but a powertrip to rebound from and also a distraction from being cheated on, so maybe less than noble intentions. But at any rate it made for a pretty good read, producing a lot of the same thoughts as reading the actual news does…disgust and incredulity, but also genuine interest. Of course, a woman of power in the office is too much of an anathema in this country and maybe Charlotte isn’t the one to change the paradigm, but someone’s got to try and (considering all it takes) it really ought to be a woman who likes to win. Thanks Netgalley.

Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win is a very timely book to read with the political climate we are currently facing. Charlotte decides to run for office and doesn’t fully realize what her family will have to endure. This is my first book to read by Jo Plazza and I will definitely be reading more of her works. I hope there will be a sequel to this book.

Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win is about a female candidate running for office. This book is Women's Fiction.

The narrator is 47 year old Charlotte Walsh (3rd person POV).

Charlotte has left a very successful job in Silicon Valley to run for the Senate in her home state of Pennsylvania. She wants to win. But she also wants to balance her ambition with her family (husband and 3 young daughters).

The start of this book was just okay for me. It was interesting to see a woman running for Senate. But I just wanted more. And the 3rd person POV made it even more difficult for me to connect with Charlotte.

There was nothing really wrong with this book. But not that much happened until the end. The book definitely felt timely and the campaign felt very real. But the very end did not feel right to me. There were a few interesting revelations, but overall this book was just okay.

I kind of wish I had known what the ending would be before I started reading this one. Didn't love that, but I did enjoy the book overall.

I received an advance readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book , it certainly was more enjoyable than living through 2016. I have to say though, why does every novel about a successful middle-aged mom have to have a understanding regarding a cheating husband? Or an almost cheating husband? We don't want to read about this. This is not something we want to face. We will not have empathy for him. I know that that is the side and the majority of this book is rather enjoying and compelling. But I'm using this Podium – no more cheating husbands. No more cheating husbands. I know this is based loosely on Hillary Clinton, but no more cheating husbands. It's not relatable. It doesn't make us like her. It doesn't make us like him. It just makes me very very worried about those children. And I'll make me want to search my husbands phone. No more.

I read this book as an advance through Netgalley. Overall, I liked the premise of the story, but Charlotte was tough to like and some character developments didn’t match up with where you’d think they’d be. After her husband was caught having an affair, they chose to work on their marriage. Fair enough. However, she concealed her own betrayal for far longer without any remorse and decided to run for senate without any thought that this life-altering secret would catch up with her. For a Silicon Valley exec, it’s pretty short sighted.
When her aide brings up a juicy piece of gossip about the opponent (pro-life candidate whose wife had an abortion), Charlotte cautioned against going public. What is surprising is that this aide is only one of two other people who know Charlotte’s betrayal. This aide was portrayed as a whip-smart, tough-as-nails young woman. But when the two women are discussing the abortion going public, neither of them thought ahead to see how Charlotte’s own secret could also be found out as retaliation? I realize all of this could be explained as two characters reacting on emotion and not logic, but it seems to contradict the narrative of them that had been built up.

Additionally, I think there is a continuity error at the end. In the scene in the bathroom, Max sends Annie out to be with her sisters. However, there is mention a few moments later about Charlotte setting down Annie as she stands to head out at hear the results.

3.5 stars, but rounding down. I really wanted to love this book, and I did like parts of it, but it just fell flat for me. First of all, I do not like the title with the story line, as their is so much more to Charlotte than her just wanting to win. I did think Piazza did a fantastic job of pointing out the injustices a woman has when running for office versus a man. It's unreal the types of things that women are critiqued on and criticized for that would never come into question for a man.

The book finally picked up for me during the last third and I zoomed through to the end to see what would happen...and then literally nothing did. The book ends abruptly leaving every single main question wide-open, with not one loose-end tied up. I guess this leaves it up to the reader to decide how you want things to go, but then again, it feels like why did I read this book in the first place, if I have to imagine on my own whether or not Charlotte wins, whether she and Max make things work, how do thinks play out with his son, and what happens to her brother, just to name a few. Left underwhelmed and annoyed with this one.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win tells a really relevant story, wrapped up in humor and wit. It is really about a woman in today' world who buys into the notion of being able to "have it all" . It also made me think a lot about the double standard women who want to vie for roles of power still face. Thought-provoking and clever!

If Hillary had run BEFORE Bill and when Chelsea was a baby, this book might be the result! Of course, that doesn't take into account the topical #MeToo movement that gives much of this book its impetus. When Charlotte Walsh decides to run for the Senate, husband Max becomes the primary caregiver for toddler twins and infant Annie. Her opponent (of course) is a thrice-married, misogynistic white male (how did Piazza do that?) who blasts Charlotte and her pro-life organization at every turn. While I sometimes found myself bogged down by the minutiae of daily details, the novel certainly captured the difficulties of running a political campaign, being a mother to three youngsters, putting up with family that wants to capitalize on the financial end of political life,dealing with the secrets that can undermine a healthy marriage, and being bashed by social media that criticizes her choice of flats over high heels on the campaign trail! Wow, covers a lot of ground and does it well! That being said, fortunately I will not be running for office anytime soon and deeply admire any woman willing to take on this incredibly thankless and overwhelming job! A good summer beach read that will make you delight you are on the beach and not the campaign trail!

Thank you to netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to like this book much more than I did. I think my hopes for women in politics have left me starved for even fictional policitians to succeed. That said Charlotte wasn’t well rounded enough for me to get my “vote.” The book also leaves several questions unanswered.

This book clearly tried to capitalize on the 2016 election, but seemed rushed. This could have been done better.

I ahve such mixed feelings about this book. The actions of the main characters were so inexplicable I was continually being pushed out of the story. The number of times I heard “no one would behave this way” while reading this book was off the charts. On the other hand, it might be considered a good example of a gender role reversal story. I can kind of see what the author was trying to do but I could not get on board.

Great, timely book! "Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win" gives a nuanced approach to the challenges facing women running for office. Piazza doesn't create a perfect character, rather a complex one in terms of life experiences and motivation to run. I like that she writes Charlotte to be a bit selfish - and not as a negative quality. This book is not neat, and does not wrap up in a tidy way - but it is complex and interesting.

In a time when more women than ever are running for office, this book is perfect. It easily captures the struggles of being a woman trying to “have it all”- a career, a family, a happy marriage, a clean house, a dinner cooked at home. Charlotte’s run for the US Senate also highlights the double-standard that still plagues women as they attempt to shatter glass ceilings everywhere. As progress is made, there are still constant reminders, especially in politics, that gender stereotypes about women are alive and well and we will need to keep working to dispel them. I thoroughly enjoyed this book as it felt easy to read, while still being an accurate portrayal of the advances we have made as women and the progress we still need to accomplish.

This is a winner is every way. Campaigning is not for the weak of heart, the sentimental or in this case, the totally honest. A fascinating look at the complexities of running for office. It has given me a whole new way of looking at candidates.