Review by Booklist Review
In her high-powered role as media relations director for the Syracuse Bobcats, Poppy Benjamin is used to setting the message, but the suspicious death of coach Red Guillory will require every skill she's acquired throughout her career. Red and Poppy started with the Bobcats during the same season, when the team went undefeated on their way to the Super Bowl, but times have changed, and the Bobcats have a losing record. Adding to Poppy's stress is the note she's received with a threatening message: "I know what you did." Poppy's network of high-profile women working in professional sports received similar notes, and they are forced to sift through their personal and professional pasts to figure out who is threatening them, and why. Flashbacks bring readers back to the early days of Poppy's career with the Bobcats, as an intern in a workplace where sexual harassment--and sexual assault--are viewed as part of working in pro sports. Debut author Staple brings her personal experience as a woman in pro football media relations to the forefront of the story. Readers of books that blend workplace politics with suspense, such as Chandler Baker's The Whisper Network (2019), will be drawn in.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Staple's nimble first book, a PR director for a professional football team reckons with her role as enabler of toxic behavior after the head coach is found dead. Poppy Benjamin has spent the past 15 years with the Syracuse Bobcats, burnishing their image and occasionally preventing players' indiscretions from making headlines. After coach Red Guillory dies in his home, the police open an investigation. Then, Poppy and four fellow female sports executives who jokingly call themselves WAGS (Women against Groping in Sports) discover they've each recently received the same anonymous note, warning that they have five days to fess up to some unspecified misdeed. As Poppy learns more about how Red died, she confronts decisions she and the other WAGS made on their way to the top that may have put other women in danger of being sexually abused. Some of the police procedural elements feel thin, but Staple's love of football and unflinching look at its dark side are both colorful and credible. It's a worthy addition to the fiction inspired by #MeToo. Agent: Andrea Somberg, Harvey Klinger. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A football team loses its head coach, and its media relations director loses her way. When she was an intern, Poppy Benjamin was at the stadium before sunrise compiling and delivering daily clips packets. Fifteen years later, she's the media relations director for the Syracuse Bobcats, one of the few powerful women in an industry ruled by men. The story alternates between these two seasons. Poppy's first year with the Bobcats also sees the introduction of talented new coach Red Guillory and the tense thrill that is an undefeated season. Now, Guillory is dead and it's Poppy's job to answer, dodge, or spin away the barrage of questions. Then Poppy receives a note that reads, "I know what you did. Tell the truth or pay the consequences. You have five days." Rising through the ranks of a major league football team has given Poppy plenty of experience in sacrifice: She has no partner or children, she leaves parties to rescue drunk athletes from clubs before they can be spotted, she buries the truth for a living. As she pinballs from crisis to crisis, the note in her purse is a reminder not only of potential looming consequences, but of the price she has already paid. The 15-year time jump highlights how Poppy changes as well as how she becomes habituated to everything around her that does not. While she's no longer an intern clutching hot coffee to prevent her mostly male colleagues from pushing her into walls, she is, in many ways, still at their mercy. Poppy's adult mind reckons with and recasts the memories of her youth. While at times verging on moralistic, this story buzzes with all-too-familiar frustration at injustices. In the doubts and thrills of her story, Staple echoes the moment in a game when a bone-crunching collision has a player carted off the field. Are we allowed to enjoy this? Should the game still go on? An endorphin-fueled, heart-hammering sprint. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
