This tackles the #MeToo movement in the film industry and it was gritty, realistic, and very timely. I appreciated the Asian representation and enjoyed reading from the POV of a female protagonist with immigrant parents. Overall, a very tense and suspenseful yet thought-provoking read.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Complicit tells the story about Sarah Lai and how she entered and left the film industry. Sarah tells her story through a journalist, who in turn is compiling stories about women in the industry that had been assaulted by a famous movie producer.

I was hooked on this book from the prologue and couldn't put it down, finishing it in one sitting. The author did a fantastic job at describing the film industry and how women, in particular women of color, had to work even harder than their male peers. I liked the fact that the author didn't have to specify or point out the obvious racism against her in the industry, it was unsaid but the reader knew it. This was shown when Sarah, as a Chinese American woman, had to work harder than her white coworkers just to get no recognition at the end of the day. Although there is one particular scene where one character is blatantly racist while casting the lead role for a movie. And just like this, there are more instances where the reader learns about how horrifying the film industry really is, especially for women.

The format of this book is really engaging and frankly, the breaks from Sarah's days in the industry where we're back in the present are very much needed. The topics in this book are strong and very hard to read at times. Still, the characters were perfectly written, especially Sarah. Her struggle with guilt over not having stopped Hugo from assaulting Holly and Courtney was hard to read. It's easy to root for Sarah, don't get me wrong, but it's still frustrating to read about these situations knowing there's nothing she could've done to help her coworkers.

The buildup towards the end is greatly done, and though the reader knows and understands what's going to happen as Sarah moves forward with the interviews, it still makes you anxious to find out how it all goes down. The way Winnie Li wrote Hugo and the hints towards his abusive and predatory behavior was perfectly done; it didn't come out of nowhere, we all saw it coming. As for the end of the book itself, it's bittersweet. On the one hand Holly, Sarah, Courtney and countless other women finally get to expose this man and the industry for allowing this to happen. But on the other hand, we get to see how Sarah lost more than five years of her life busting her ass and basically doing all the work just for her white coworkers to get all the credit and for her to lose her job. She's esentially forced to walk away from her dreams and passion to do something she doesn't enjoy, she's lost everything while these people get to reap the rewards of her work,

Overall, this was a phenomenal book with a well written and complex main character. It talks about a hard topic that's very relevant today. Winnie Li did an excellent job with this book! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing and advanced copy of this book

Sarah Lai is daughter of Chinese restaurant owning immigrants. Her parents had high hopes and standards for her but Sarah dreamed of movies and Hollywood. Through a bit of luck and hard work she became a producer at a very young age of a cutting edge celebrated film Alas, now , in her 30's she is a community college professor of movies living almost paycheck to paycheck.

We hear Sarah's story via flashbacks and interviews with an intrepid journalist unwinding a #metoo type story that he hopes to report on. Sarah tells her side of the story and reveals what actually happened and if she had been complicit.

I think this book will stay with me for a long, long, time. I absolutely loved hearing the producing side of movies, learning more about the business. It was especially interesting through the perspective of an Asian-American who is clearly the "other" in the very white movie world she depicts. I would highly recommend this story to any moviebuff, metoo advocate, and thriller lover. The story encapsulates much of what so many of us experiences as young women. Read #Complicit! #NetGalley #NetGalleyreads #atria #EmilyBestlerbooks
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#Atria #EmilyBestler

As a #MeToo novel, Complicit plays it relatively straight. Unlike the revenge thriller or dystopian fantasy version that seems more common amongst commercial #MeToo fiction, Complicit tells the tale of a young woman who enters the film industry with major ambitions to be a producer. And from the start, it's pretty obvious how the story is going to unfold.

Our first introduction to Sarah Lai is when she's 39, a decade removed from the industry, now teaching mostly disinterested film students at a local community college. She'd once had a promising career in film, and her last project was with Holly, a lead actor who's since become a Hollywood A-lister, and Hugo, a powerful financier who's now facing multiple #MeToo accusations. A reporter interviewing Sarah for the New York Times forms the frame narrative.

Two things make Complicit stand out: its heroine is Chinese-American, the middle child of Hong Kong immigrants who own a Chinese restaurant in New York. Most #MeToo stories feature white heroines, so it was nice to see the author explore how Sarah's Asian identity, and her family's immigrant background, added even more barriers to her making it big in film. Also, unlike many other #MeToo novels, Complicit -- as hinted by its title -- explores how Sarah can be both a victim of sexist exploitation, and complicit in perpetrating it towards other women. 

The thing is, when the reveals about Sarah's complicity do come out, they're more tragic than damning. The journalist, Thom, fully exonerates her of any wrongdoing, and despite Sarah's own guilt, he's also very much in the right to do so. In both cases that Sarah played a role in another woman's victimization, she was also very much an innocent herself trying to survive. And while she probably could have made different and better choices to protect other women, it's clear that little blame, if any, actually rests on her shoulders.

All this just makes Complicit more depressing than truly disturbing or disquieting. As much as we should never be numbed to #MeToo experiences, Sarah's story is one we've read dozens of times at this point, in newspapers and magazines, and even on Notes screen caps posted by various celebrities on social media. The novel does raise a valid point about how Sarah's story, and the stories of those like her, are relegated almost to footnote status in splashier headlines about more famous figures like actors, directors, and industry leaders. And perhaps for that alone, this novel is a good call to pay attention to lesser known stories as well. 

Complicit is a solid novel, and the writing is good. There are also some really strong standout moments -- I love the friendship between Sarah and Holly, and the subtle way in which Li showed how things evolved on that front. I also really liked the scene where Sarah discovers a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant while filming in LA, and how the place anchors her with its tastes of home. And I particularly like the novel's depiction of Sarah's boss Sylvia, who, as an older woman with her own film production company, was also a striking depiction of someone both victimized by, and complicit in, a sexist system. The way her star director Xander and Hugo keep sidelining her in her own production company feels all-too-relatable. And the way she tries to protect Sarah at first, yet diminishes her when she becomes a viable threat to Sylvia's power, is a spot-on depiction of the ways in which surviving in a sexist industry can mean compromising on a bit of your humanity.

Overall, Complicit doesn't really say anything new or surprising. But it's a solid story, and well-told. I like how the ending gave a touch of hope.

+

Thank you to Atria Books for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This nook was just an okay read for me. I feel the whole Me Too movement story has been overdone. The book was well written even though the story itself was a little drawn out.

Complicit was a slow burn novel.

It is a series of interviews between Thom, a white journalist who comes to do an investigative article. And our main narrator is a woman from Chinese descent named Sarah and what occurred when she worked for a Production company some ten years prior. Sarah is now a lecturer working at an obscure community college in New York that focuses on screenplays.

We begin the story with a film intern who rises through the ranks of a production company, only to come crashing down due to a sexually predatory boss, Hugo.

Complicit tackles the racism and sexism of the film industry. Li immerses us in the film industry, taking us through how movies go from an idea to the script, casting, shooting and distribution. She expresses this skillfully throughout the story.

The pacing was fairly even and did a solid job of building tension.There was this artistic quality in the descriptions and how Sarah stated her opinions. But, the best part of this book was the messages it delivered. This book did not pull away from the ugly sides of people and #metoo film industry.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Atria/ Emily Bestler Books for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange m

pro tip do not read three stories about sexual abuse right after one another
this book delivers a nuanced and gritty look at the positions women are put in in the film industry
it’s detailed and realistic almost to a fault - narrative suffers heavily from it
the story structure just feels so predictable - there’s no sense of anticipation
i enjoyed the asian rep even if it was a bit on the stereotypical side
yeah don’t expect an easy read i’m so exhausted i’m gonna go read about murderous female cannibals

Thanks NetGalley for this arc !

Interesting book told in Sarah’s pov. It’s a book about the #metoo movement. How women are treated differently because of their sex. I truly enjoyed this book it’s not my usual book to read but I would definitely recommend!

I loved this novel. It combines elements of the Me Too movement with a first generation American story about a film buff who rises through the ranks of a production company, only to come crashing down due to a sexually predatory boss.

Complicit tackles the racism and elitism of the film industry in a page-turning suspense story. The author immerses us in the film industry, taking us through how movies go from idea to script to casting to shooting to completion and distribution. She weaves this skillfully throughout the suspense narrative.

A rare suspense novel with well-developed characters, this one is a must read!

Thanks to NetGalley for the free ARC in return for an honest review.

A book behind the scenes of the movie industry during the #metoo movement? COUNT ME IN!! We all know in some way women are treated differently in careers than men are, and this book truly reminds us of that! I enjoyed this book even though it is out of my usually genre that I read. Well done!!

Thank you to the publishers for my arc copy of this novel for my honest review.

Sarah Lai, has dreams of making it in the film industry. She starts off with an internship and slowly gets more responsibility. She is working her way up. Then she meets Hugo North who decides to back the next film and she gets to be Associate Producer. She believes all her dreams will come true.

Sarah makes one mistake that will haunt her for years. Now a journalist reaches out to her to share what it is was like working with Hugo North. She sees this as her opportunity to tell the truth and set the record straight.

Complicit by Winnie M Li is an uncomfortable look at the behind the scenes of movie making. Set in the pre #metoo time frame, this novel explores the many ways the uneven power dynamic of film-making encourages exploitation.
This novel stayed with me after I finished it. I thought about how complicity can come through by omission as well as commission. Are victims required to warn other victims? How has the socialization of women to be agreeable and polite allowed the sexual aggression of men to run unfettered? What does it say about our society that women are expected to be careful instead of men behaving decently?
Definitely a great read that is thought provoking.

This book was a very detailed read. It was interesting on that it delves behind the scenes of screenwriting and producing movies. Secondly, it brings to light the point of view of a woman, of Asian descent and her place in the workforce of the movie industry. Thirdly, it addresses the #metoo movement and it’s effect on today’s society.

This book was both everything I was prepared for and nothing I was expecting. I hope that sentence made some amount of sense, because my feelings toward this book sure don’t.

First of all, this book kind of gave me Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo vibes. Partly because the story setup was similar - a formerly-successful-in-the-film-industry woman finally comes clean about her experiences. The narrative flashes back and forth between those earlier days and the present, talking to her interviewer.

However, it’s also nothing like that. This is much more earnest and lacks that sense of glamor.

Anyway, I’m not a fan of comparing books unless they’re exact carbon copies of each other, and this was clearly not. So, moving on to my actual opinions.

“There’s thousands of us. Hoping to be a young hotshot, one of the 30 Under 30, or 40 Under 40.
There are no lists for 50 Under 50. Because if we haven’t made it by then, we probably don’t belong in this world.”

I feel like the plotline could have had a lot more…basis behind it? Sarah Lai is contacted by a New York Times interviewer as a source for an investigation concerning a prominent figure in her film-industry past. But then, when Sarah gets to the interview, she starts going into flashbacks right after being asked one question.

Considering that the flashbacks were basically 70% of the book, it’s not like anything could be done to reduce them, but I think that there was really no logical reason for her to immediately start monologuing about how she got into the film industry right from the start of her interview.

Like, if I asked someone a question like, “Tell me about this situation with this person,” I would be very confused when they started telling me about their college experience and childhood dreams of the Oscars.

Basically, I feel like the transition into the story structure could have made more sense.

Other than that, I was very immersed in the storyline. It took me a while to really get into what was going on, but once I knew the characters and the trajectory of the plot, I could start getting into the book. The pacing was very even and did a really good job of building tension.

The writing was compelling. There was this artistic quality in the descriptions and how Sarah stated her opinions. It was truly cinematic, no pun intended considering the amount of film knowledge the narration included.

“It occurred to me, how you could almost die from the wanting, all the striving with no reward.”

The characterization was done really well. I think it was interesting that each person had these defining traits - they were all human, and written as such, but there were these behaviors or traits that you just automatically associated with people.

They weren’t flat or undeveloped at all, though. Even though everything was from Sarah’s perspective, you could see that she and everyone else had their own personalities, lives and choices to make. I think the effect that had was striking.

“How slavish we are to our own fleeting sense of ego.”

The best part of this book was the messages it delivered. This book did not shy away from the grittiness and ugly sides of people and specifically of the film industry.

Naturally, since this book follows Sarah as she’s being interviewed about a rape case, you could expect a lot of narration about sexual assault and harassment. It goes deep into the objectification of women, victim-blaming, and manipulation. It was dark and didn’t even try to cover that up, which was refreshing in its own upsetting way.

It was scary to read things like this. Men in power and desperate women, manipulation and coercion, and of course, the casting couch.

Underneath all that there was a running commentary on ambition. What are people willing to do to achieve their goals? Who are they willing to hurt, what things are they willing to say, what do they overlook?

And then there was the blame and the guilt. Whose fault was it that things like this happened? Naturally the rapist is to blame, but whose actions led to that situation? Who enabled him? Who made the choices that allowed these things to happen?

That was the whole theme of the book. Was Sarah, given her position, complicit in what happened?

“If you’re trying to forge your way ahead in this world, you never say no. you always say yes.
See how early the traps are set for us?”

What I didn’t like as much was the Asian representation, because it just felt like it ran off so many stereotypes. I know that Winnie M. Li is Taiwanese-American and is perfectly entitled to write Sarah’s representation however she wants, especially considering that these experiences are shared by pretty much every Asian woman.

But I wasn’t a fan of the way Sarah’s work ethic and meticulousness was constantly attributed to her being Chinese-American. She herself would say things like “it was in my culture to work that hard, both for myself and for the expectations of my parents.” And then other characters would say things like “maybe it was part of the fact that she was Asian, but she put everything into that film.”

Can’t she just be a hardworking person? Does it have to be specified that her parents are from Hong Kong and they run a Chinese restaurant, in order to justify the fact that Sarah went into the office on weekends?

It might just be me, being sick of the constant stereotypes I’ve grown up with and the behaviors they’ve prompted in my classmates, but that just rubbed me the wrong way. I see what statements they were trying to make, but I can’t get behind it.

And then there was the judgement of other girls. Sarah sees a pretty blonde girl, recommended by a male boss, and immediately assumes she’s stupid…because she’s a pretty blonde girl, recommended by a male boss.

“I forced a polite, close-lipped smile. I stared at her halo of golden hair.
Fuck this, I thought. This girl doesn’t have an original thought in her brain.”

Despite this being a book about rape, there was so much of this prejudice that almost came close to slut-shaming. I see that it was trying to make a statement about the ruthless judgement involved in making hiring decisions, especially in a film and productions environment, but I was not a fan.

Overall, Complicit was a deep dive into the underworld of the film industry, as well as the things it can do to women. It was about representation, fame, ambition and corruption. It was about feminism, aggression, prejudice and victimization. It was harsh and unflinching in a way that swept me into it but also somewhat sickened me.

“I mean, how little do we value ourselves? Starving ourselves and stabbing each other in the back - for what? We’re mice being toyed with by cats. We keep thinking we’ll get to be the cats one day too. But the world doesn’t work like that.”

Complicit by Winnie M. Li was just an okay book for me. It has a timely topic, however, I just couldn't get into that particular topic, although the writing is quite good with a sympathetic main character in Sarah. I feel the basis of the book is overdone.

38% of the way through and really really good so far. I want to keep reading this and I hope I can finish this up by night - it’s that good.

Reading thoughts -
* Sarah is a very sympathetic character,
* This one made me feel low-key anxious during reading, like I want to gather a group of pissed off middle aged women and go set fire to the patriarchy,
* I can definitely see this as a film.

Update:
Post reading thoughts -
* Shit, this was amazing. Excellent, excellent reading.
* The deep poignancy in the writing was so realistic I needed to get up and take a 5 mile walk after I finished this.
* Li is very, very talented and I can’t wait to read more of her work.

Highly recommended.

COMPLICIT
BY: WINNIE M LI

Involved with others in an illegal act or wrongdoing is the definition I came up with on a Google search for the meaning of the title of this evocative novel. "Complicit," was a slow burn of a novel.
It is a series of interviews between Thom Gallagher, a white journalist who comes from a well to do family who is doing an investigative article. The main narrator is an American woman from Hong Kong descent named Sarah Lai and what appeared to me to be her story about when she worked for a Production company. Sarah is now a lecturer working at an obscure community college in New York that focuses on screenplays. It seemed as somewhat of a confessional nature to me or at least someone trying to come to terms with their guilt over what is not really clear in the beginning. Sarah was well educated and was over qualified by taking a position as an unpaid intern with a production company. Thom Gallagher comes across as empathetic and sincere. He can't reveal his other sources but sprinkled throughout his interviews with Sarah are other women and mostly they are short but the predominant ones are with Sarah's former boss who hired her named Sylvia. Sarah is the main source and narrator which as a recent graduate of Columbia and an interest of becoming a Producer someday who is fascinated by movies knows there is value at taking an unpaid position as an intern. Her parents aren't happy about it but Sarah explains to them that the job will give her experience. At first, as a reader we get a glimpse that Sarah is bitter and unsatisfied working in an uninteresting, low paying job with apathetic students who she reads and corrects their mediocre scripts. She begins by telling Thom how she got an unpaid internship with Producer Sylvia Zimmerman at Firefly.

Sarah comes from an Asian background with immigrant parents who have instilled in her to work hard. Her sister Karen is an Accountant and Sarah's parents who own a Chinese restaurant are not thrilled that she is working for free and in a job that is beneath her education. Sarah has always loved movies and sees her internship as a way of someday producing her own movies. She is ambitious but has morals and values. She is at first delegated to copying scripts and soon she is reading them by her own interests. She helps a young and unheard of screenwriter named Xander improve his scripts through her raw talent doing edits and suggestions on how to improve them. Xander seems to be Sylvia's most promising client and with Sarah's help and dedication one of the scripts leads the three of them gaining recognition in a movie at one of the famous independent film festival. It is at this festival where their film catches the attention of British Billionaire, Hugo North.

All of a sudden this low budget production company is catapulted into an endless supply of money increasing the low budget that Sarah, Sylvia and Xander are used to working with. Hugo North soon changes the production company's name from Firefly to Conquest. Hugo is at first picking up the bill for endless Moet celebrations and while his cash infusion allows for eventually the making of Xander's movie out in LA. But first Hugo North seems like a dream come true for Sylvia, she is upset that Hugo has changed the name of her company and he is automatically named Executive Director without doing any of the work. Sylvia doesn't want to shoot their new movie in LA because she is a mother of four kids in New York. Sylvia reluctantly gives in and its not soon after where Sylvia gets called home with an emergency with a bulimic daughter one year away from College and Sarah starts to become acting producer in Sylvia's absences. The leading lady in the movie named Holly is a professional actor and a likable person whom Sarah befriends.

There is a lot of partying going on with drugs and a never ending supply of alcohol during after hours. Hugo and Xander have a reputation for an endless supply of beautiful young women at these after hour parties. Sarah becomes conscious that something is bothering the young assistant she has hired for Hugo. Hugo has become more bossy and sometimes rude.

Here is where my interpretation comes into what is going on. I sort of got the clue that Thom Gallagher who is writing an article for the New York Times he is mostly interviewing Sarah throughout the novel. There are excerpts from Sylvia who as a woman who is trying to care for her four children and is mostly in New York City she still remains as Producer of Xander's movie even though Sarah is doing most of the grueling work. I noticed the Author is Asian and wonder how much of her placing Sarah as main character also being Asian is based on the message that Winnie M Li is trying to convey.

I never know how much of this narrative is autobiographical or fiction or a mixture. The themes seem to be that men with money equals power, entitlement etc. Also I didn't think it took years to make a movie. Everything seemed authentic and realistic about this novel. It was all very intriguing and fascinating so that it made for addictive reading. You already know that Sarah has given up her dream of becoming a producer but it's hard to explain anymore without giving out spoilers. I felt that making Sarah of Asian ethnicity and making her voice the central one that one of the messages was that Asian women could be seen as more submissive. I don't feel as Sarah was complicit into what Hugo did to the women. I did see her as less likely to interfere with the heavy partying going on after hours. She seemed to care and tried to talk to Holly when her instincts told her that something might have happened to the leading actor. Holly wouldn't talk about it she was evasive. It was clear that if Sylvia was there she would have set firmer limits as to the amount of drinking and drugs that were imbibed from the employees involved with making Xander's movie. She was much older and had more experience than Sarah had. I did end up loving this a lot and saw it more of a character study and a subject that is very relevant to the present. I highly, highly recommend this to all and those who are interested in how movies are made.

Publication Date: August 16, 2022

Thank you to Net Galley, Winnie M Li and Atria Books Atria & Emily Bestler Books for providing me with my Arc in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

#Complicit #WinnieMLi #AtriaBooksAtriaEmilyBestlerBooks #NetGalley

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

Oh dear me. This poor book. Having just finished Siren Queen, I realised I needed something totally different or it was going to be unfair on everybody involved. And I guess I should have picked something from tbr instead of my NetGalley queue because I deliberately try to go into NetGalley books as, you know, un-influenced as possible. In any case, I thought a contemporary-set thriller would be a suitable change of pace. And then about twenty pages into said contemporary thriller, discovered it was about film-making, Hollywood, and #metoo.

So, I’m sorry, Complicit. My emotions weren’t as engaged as they should have been when I read you, but that’s about me, not about you. Because this is an engaging thriller that has a lot to say about a lot of complicated things, including the film industry, in the immigrant experience in America and, of course, the dynamics of abuse and exploitation. In some ways, ‘thriller’ doesn’t feel like a wholly adequate description of this book. It’s got that interweaving of past and present structure that so many thrillers use to keep you compulsively reading but … but what’s notable here is that you already know what’s going to happen (the entitled, clearly abusive man is going to do what men like that do) and even what happens afterwards (the heroine is teaching at a community college when the book opens). So it’s essentially using the mechanics of the thriller to reflect the emotional and psychological intensities of living with the memory of abuse and a conviction of your own—the clue is in the name—complicity.

In fact, the whole theme of complicity is inextricable with the expectations of the thriller: thrillers prime us to expect guilt, dark revelations, sudden shifts in sympathy. What we have in Complicity is something far more banal and far more tragic: a narrator, convinced of her own guilt priming the reader to expect some terrible third act disclosure that proves she was the villain all along. And I’m not saying the heroine is without responsibility of here, but … I mean … the book is called Complicit. Not tell us that this is a story about complicity (like, duh) but to force us interrogate what it actually means when we talk about complicity, especially when it comes to women, and especially in the context of rape culture.

In any case, the book is narrated by Sarah Lai, the daughter of hard-working immigrant parents who find her desire to work in the film industry incomprehensible to the point of selfishness. But, through luck more than judgement, she does manage to land an internship at a small, independent production company. From there, she secures a permanent (and paid) position as a kind of all-around do-everything person, hoping to succeed by sheer dint of hard work, talent and loyalty. The naivety of this, of course, kind of painful to read. Not least because Sarah is genuinely good at her job: unfortunately, while this leads to partial recognition, it also leads to a good deal of exploitation, often by people who do not themselves as exploitative, like her boss, Sylvia. A successful indie film brings the company to the attention of Hugo North, a billionaire who has decided he wants to invest in the film business. What follows is a predicable powerplay—predicable in the sense of typical, not in the sense of the book itself being predicable—between the debauchery-seeking billionaire with the money, the easily influenced director who believes himself a visionary, a woman trying to retain control of her production company while juggling a family, an up-and-coming starlet about to get her big break, and Sarah herself.

Like most thrillers, the narrative structure is set in the present—in the aftermath of something terrible—with the defeated, damaged heroine agreeing to tell her story to a journalist from New York Times, a man who has built his career on #metoo stories. Occasionally there are sections from his interviews with other people involved in the story Sarah is telling: they offer potentially needed context but, for me, they felt on the edge of being overtly utilitarian. Regardless, it’s an interesting framing device and I wasn’t completely sure how I felt—or how I was meant to feel—about Thom Gallagher as the story progressed. He’s specifically an “insider”, a handsome white American man from an already established family of politicians and I never got a handle, perhaps because Sarah didn’t either, on whether he believed his own rhetoric or was just yet another man exploiting women—the trauma of women—for personal gain. He didn’t come across as particularly predatory, and says all the right things, but it’s hard to overlook the optics here: an Asian American woman from a working-class background telling her story to a white American man steeped in privilege. But, on the other hand, without Thom the book would consist (with the exception of a gay hairdresser) almost entirely of men who were either ignorant or actively abusive. And perhaps the message here need not be women cannot escape the power of men, even if the men are trying to use their power good, but that systems of abuse are a problem for everyone. Not merely those directly impacted.

For me, one of the most painful aspects of the book was Sarah’s understanding herself as shaped by her upbringing as the child of immigrants. Not just the degree to which this condemns to her to permanent outsider status, missing all of the connections that white, middle class Americans take for granted, but the fact the values her family instilled in her—work hard and you will be rewarded—ultimately render her so very vulnerable for exploitation. I don’t want make to trite points about the myth of America but Sarah’s story is at once deeply personal, and deeply embedded in its cultural context. I think it would be simple enough to view Complicit as another #metoo or post #metoo story but it’s asking bigger questions than that. About power and the use of power, about marginalisation and vulnerability, and about the cultural, ideological and institutional systems that allow abuse and exploitation to flourish.

The book ends after the publication of Thom’s article in a space of delicate potential. Sarah has learned to see herself differently and, therefore, her current life as less of a punishment for her previous actions. We don’t learn if anything actually changes for her or for the other people in Thom’s story, but there’s a sense of hope, I think, that wasn’t there before. We don’t even learn what happens to Hugo North but this feels appropriate: it is not, and never was, his story. Although, on the subject of Hugo North, I was mildly bewildered that he was British? I mean, I know we’re the pricks who used to have an empire and yes we Brexited like a bunch of dorks but … like … as a British person working in American publishing, I can tell you right now that if you’re looking for an embodiment of cultural imperialism it’s, um, it’s really not us? Maybe it was an attempt to distance the fictional character Hugo North from any high-profile Hollywood types who have semi-recently been identified as abusers (not that I’m saying British people in positions of power aren’t just as capable of abuse and exploitation as Americans) but it just seems a very specific choice? Especially when the sort of new money “I made my money in real estate” billionaire he is feels like such an American archetype to me. Plus, have you seen how small our island is? I don’t think real estate is quite the same sort of deal over here. It doesn’t help—and forgive my Brit-picking here—that he just doesn’t talk like a British person, at least it didn’t sound that way to me. We don’t, for example, say gotten.

The other thing that kind of bothers me about Hugo North—unless he was a deliberately nod to the ‘all British people are evil’ Hollywood thing—is that he, too, is a Hollywood outsider. Not, of course in the same way Sarah is. He is, of course a man with money and privilege but he’s from a different country, he earned his money in a different industry, and he doesn’t actually know the movie business very well. Maybe I’m just being defensive because I don’t like “all British people are evil” as a trope (oddly enough?) but Hugo North did disconcert me. Intentionally or not, he ended up feeling to me like a slightly peculiar attempt to displace the problem Hollywood’s rape culture onto someone/something from outside of Hollywood itself. And I don’t know if that’s … a useful way to look at this particular problem?

Anyway, whatever you may personally feel about its portrayal of British abusers, this is really good book. Gripping and nuanced, and written with what is clearly an insider’s eye in terms of its subject material. Strongly recommended, though do take care of yourself given the triggering subject material.

I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review

I loved this one. Very fast paced, had me turning pages as I tore through it – I had to see how it would end. The characters were well rounded and the narrative felt believable. Gave me chills. Solid five

When we close the book after the final page and we are left with nothing more than our own thoughts, we finally experience the truth of the words we’ve just read. In Complicit, by Winnie M Li, we experience something even more - truth in a reality that we aren’t usually allowed to glimpse.

This book is an exploration of power, wealth, and the depravity it provides in worlds where men possess it and fully believe it’s a one-way ticket for an all they want buffet in which women are simply a menu item. It is certainly difficult to read, but gives such important insight into the ways women are assaulted and used, as well as their actions and behaviors after the fact.

This is an education and a sermon we all need.