Book Review: How Far She’s Come

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This is my book review for How Far She’s Come by writer Holly Brown. It is an unforgettable, harrowing novel about a young broadcast journalist who discovers a mysterious diary written by a female broadcaster in 1991.

You might be wondering what a diary from 1991 has to do with you. You’re about to find out. Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it…

Book Summary:

Cheyenne Florian, young and ambitious, has landed her dream job as a correspondent for Independent News Network. She’s 24 years old, and on the strength of a few vlogs, she’s recruited for the recently hatched Independent News Network, INN.

With the slogan “Because independent thinking is the only way out,” INN has branded itself as innovative and edgy. Cheyenne quickly finds that the age-old dynamic of men resenting women in business still stands. Some of the female staff resent her meteoric rise, while a number of the men are only too happy to welcome her onboard.

Then she finds the diary left for her anonymously, written in 1991 by a female broadcaster named Elyse Rohrbach. The mysterious diary is accompanied by a note, urging the reader to learn from the past. She wants to believe that the note is intended as inspiration and friendly advice, or at most, a warning.

But as peculiar and dangerous parallels begin to emerge, she starts to wonder if something more sinister is at work. It’s almost as if someone is engineering the similarities in Cheyenne’s life to match those from Elyse’s past. It is like she’s a pawn in a very twisted game, but Cheyenne is determined to rewrite the rules and play her own game.

Though they’re separated by more than twenty-five years, Elyse and Cheyenne are forced to learn the same lesson: Nothing is more threatening than a woman who doesn’t yet know her own power.

Cheyenne’s struggles at the network actually mirror what this woman went through during her own meteoric rise decades ago. And the diary tells her story.

Cheyenne thinks she can change things for women in broadcasting. But she quickly learns that, ultimately, men are still threatened by women in power.

My Review:

I typically love Holly Brown’s novels, but this one didn’t keep me as interested as her other books have. Although I thought the plot was very interesting.

She is a great writer, no doubt about that, but this book just didn’t excite me all that much. Someone working in the TV broadcasting field would probably have appreciated it much more.

About The Author:

Holly Brown is a novelist, wife, mother, marriage and family therapist, poker enthusiast, and resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s also the lover of some incredibly shameful reality TV, a devotee of NPR (she owes a debt of gratitude for inspiring more than one novel), and a believer that people should always be willing to make mistakes and to apologize first.