Russian agents in planted in Silicon Valley my have been discovered by Alice. But the more Alice learns the more she questions.

I read this book last year or I should say that I tried to read this book. It was so boring to me. There was nothing interesting about the characters and it moved slowly. So those two factors alone made it very hard for me to keep my focus on this story. Try as I might as I did try sticking with the book.

However, after finding myself struggling for a good long while, I than did the skimming effect. Just to see if the story got better. Nothing changed and the ending was something that I actually would have been disappointed about if I had liked this book.

Another bookstagram influenced read! I really enjoyed this one - it felt different that the books I’ve read lately, and relative to life and our connection to technology. I was worried I would get lost in part of the tech verbiage, but as I kept reading I realized that was not the case!

The novel follows multiple viewpoints of people involved with one of Silicon Valley’s hottest tech companies. It was an interesting read as I felt a strong connection to Julia, a female powerhouse and Russian spy. She was the protagonist you should hate, but I never did. I found her story compelling and loved the honesty she gave throughout the novel.

Overall I found this book extremely engaging. It was interesting to read how these Russian spies so easily interjected themselves into American life and business without ever being suspected. Highly recommend this book if you’re looking for a spy fiction with strong female leads!

This book is marketed as being about women in tech, but really it was more of...a spy novel? It's hard to put my finger on. I didn't dislike it, but the fact that it wasn't what I expected threw me off a bit. I think this book would have been more enjoyable if it had gone 100% spy novel or 100% examination of women in the workplace, but it skated somewhere between in a way that was never quite fulfilling for me, though I was invested in the characters and was interested to find out what happened to them.

I started reading this book and found that it was not for me. I didn't want to review a book that I didn't finish.

I found this book very engrossing. The characters were easy to get to know and connect with. I had to put this book down to finish work obligations - book club books - and didn't get back to it for several months. However, I kept thinking about it and wondering how it was going to turn out - which ended up being very satisfying.

Did not get to this book in 2021.
My review is not a reflection of the work or the writing/plot itself, but rather speaks to other books that caught my attention more.
Hate I didn't manage to squeeze this one in, but there are so many books and only so much time.

I would look to Goodreads or other reviewers on Netgalley who read the title and will offer their unbiased opinion.

Kathy Wang's "Imposter Syndrome" was one of my most anticipated releases of 2021. The title of this novel is a feeling I often relate to as a young teacher in a hypercritical society. I was surprised to find a combination of a spy story and a thriller. I was expecting more of a poignant story reflecting on the struggles faced by young professionals, so this book did fall a bit flat for me as it was more of a wild, unrealistic whirlwind than I'd hoped for. However, I do think that others who go into the story knowing more about the premise will enjoy it!

What a novel! Fast paced, engaging plot, insightfully drawn characters, each with a twist on their typical “type.” This can be read on so many levels and enjoyed heartily on each of them. I loved “Family Trust” but this deftly plotted and written sophomore effort truly establishes Kathy Wang as a versatile, genre-defying writer for the ages. Loved this and can’t wait to see what stories she’ll share with us next.

Although I did not finish this title, it did appeal to a lot of the readers that I work with. I think the character development was done well.

There were a lot of aspects about this book that I found to be really interesting and compelling. I thought that the general storyline was an interesting premise, and I thought the different settings within the story were also interesting. At first I also thought that the multiple POV's were also an interesting touch, but if I am being honest once it got to around the 50% mark I truly felt like with each new character pov introduced it sort of took away from the story/became harder to follow. I also thought that the genre was a bit confusing, I think that there were aspects that felt very contemporary fiction, or drama, while sometimes it felt more along the lines of a thriller or even mystery. I also felt like the characters just weren't very likable, and had very little to no development. I hate to say this but I really felt like I was pushing myself to get through the book, which I was disappointed because the first couple of chapters held so much promise. I truly think that there are components of this book that are really interesting, and that it could've been amazing, but unfortunately it felt a little lost. I just felt like I kept waiting to get hooked, or for there to be a huge plot twist or something that just never came. I do think that there were also parts that seemed just a little too far fetched to be believable.

I will say that I do think the cover is beautiful, and I am really appreciative of receiving an arc even if it didn't necessarily work for me.

(2.5 bumped to 3)

I really wanted to enjoy this more than I did. I was really excited to receive an arc after reading the excerpt on BOTM. It unfortunately fell a little flat for me, and I never quite became invested in the story or the characters. I have seen many people love it though, so this could definitely be a case of "it's not you, it's me". I would still recommend to people who are looking for a semi spy, semi feminist, semi thriller novel, with unlikeable characters.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this title. I wanted to like this book, I like the spy & Silicon Valley elements of the story, but I never felt compelled to keep reading. I had to force myself through sections, particularly when certain characters were the narrator. It's a decent thriller, but nothing special.

A fun mix of domestic thriller, spy novel, and satire set in Silicon Valley, featuring a Russian spy who gets a little too comfortable in her role as a high powered tech icon. A nice crossover that will appeal to fans of Chris Pavone's the Expats and a great follow up to Wang's Family Trust.

Wang weaves a legitimate tale of modern espionage in Silicon Valley that is believable and makes one wonder if it is not truly a possibility in today's world. They say most fiction is based on truth... The Imposter Syndrome is a very satisfying read if you give it a chance.

This was an interesting concept for a book, but I struggled with some of the Russian aspects in the book. Overall a solid read and will recommend to those with interest in the genre.

In Imposter Syndrome a Russian orphan is recruited out of college to become a spy for a government intelligence agency, working to rise in the ranks and infiltrate a thriving tech company in Silicon Valley — Intrigued? I was too! ⁣
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Julia Lerner is the COO of Tangerine, a massive social media company, and has obliged the agency by quietly providing requested information from Tangerine over the years, but now, their asks are getting larger, putting her at risk of being “found out”. She has to consider Charlie, her husband, and Emily, her newborn daughter, and enjoys the life she’s built in California. Other primary characters include Leo, Julia’s handler, and Alice, an IT support employee at Tangerine who suspects unusual activity on the servers. ⁣
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I saw mixed reviews prior to starting the book but I really liked it — I was curious when I read the premise and despite it being easy to perceive Julia as “the bad guy” I couldn’t help but root for her. The spy storyline was interesting but I found the storyline about Julia’s executive role at a tech company to be the most interesting aspect. Lots of relatable issues for many women, especially those who work in the corporate or tech space. Imposter Syndrome was a character-driven, thought provoking read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

IMPOSTER SYNDROME is kind of a hard novel to pin down. Overall, I’d say it’s more of a social commentary on Silicon Valley than spy thriller. I kind of wish it had been the reverse.

Julia is a Russian spy who has worked her way up to a C-suite position in big tech. She has money, power, and fame, and she wants to keep all three. Alice is an MIT grad from a working class immigrant family. She craves stability; her mundane but stable existence is thrown out of order when she discovers Julia’s treachery.

It took me awhile to get into this story, and I’m not sure why. It’s very well-written. I think it comes down to the identity problem I mentioned above. Also, the two women main characters hardly meet, which means the conflict is largely internalized. There are also some aspects of the later plot which required me to suspend belief. Ultimately, I liked the book but also wished for parts of it to be different. I guess my review is just as hard to pin down as IMPOSTER SYNDROME.

One Julia is the wildly successful COO of Tangerine, one of the world’s largest technology companies (think Facebook). She’s happily married, living a life most of us only dream about. The other is a watchful, young Russian orphan desperate to be adopted. Plain and quiet, she’s ignored until later she catches the eye of Leo, a recruiter for the SPB, Russia’s secret intelligence agency. What could these two possibly have in common? They’re the same person and in Impostor Syndrome we watch as the unremarkable Julia, now carefully trained and coached, climbs ever higher in America all while reporting back to mother Russia.

While Julia is gathering information, crushing the competition, and enjoying the fruits of rampant capitalism, Alice Yu is struggling as a 35-year-old low-level tech support person at Tangerine. She had been in a senior position at a startup, but between it being acquired by Tangerine and trusting the wrong man, she’s now in the basement of engineering jobs and having to share her apartment with her cousin. Life is not good. When a basic assignment leads to her discovery of massive amounts of personal data being transferred off Tangerine’s servers to an unknown destination, she’s not sure what to do. She’s torn between following the rules, being on the outs with her manager, and worrying about the way she found the leak.

Given where we are in the world right now, Impostor Syndrome is timely reading. Author Kathy Wang manages to write a novel that not only feeds off the creepily intrusive nature of technology (facial recognition software, cloud storage, location mapping), but heightens the tension with the presence of an enemy nation using our own technology against us. If you watched the series The Americans then you’re somewhat familiar with the world of Russian spies, but that was set in the 80s when paper was still the main source of transmitted information. It was tangible, unlike data. Also, in the decades that have passed the kinds of information that hold power has shifted, making what once might have been innocuous dangerous. At the very least, there is the uncomfortable knowledge that “privacy” is a very fluid concept for modern-day technology companies.

For as much as Impostor Syndrome is about espionage and technology, I was just as intrigued by the lives of Julia and Alice—two women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley. The pressure on both comes from very different sources, but the impact feels the same. Julia carries a double weight, that of her outward job and that of her secret work. She’s performed as expected in both, but there’s no easing of the demands made on her. Russia ratchets up their expectations just as corporate America looks to her as an exemplar of female achievement in a male dominated industry. For Alice, there are the familial expectations of being a first-generation immigrant, in the workplace and in her personal life. Then there is the trying-to-be-heard aspect of being a woman. Both women are prodded and maneuvered by circumstances into ever more precarious and uncomfortable spaces.

Wang brings together the novel’s elements with finesse. The only place the novel stumbled was in the later stages of the story when more intelligence agencies came into play. It may be an accurate representation, but it slowed the pace. Beyond that, the ‘who’s watching who’ tension is well-done as is the nuance around Julia’s character. She begins as a clear villain, but as the novel progresses, it becomes less clear—an ambivalence I welcomed. It helped move Impostor Syndrome from a straight forward spy novel into something no less engaging, but with more depth.

I really did want to like this one more. There were some parts that I thought were interesting and I would get into but then most of the book I just couldn't.