Name: Amy Thibodeau's review of Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win by Jo Piazza
Item: Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win
Rating: 3
Author: Amy Thibodeau

Jo Piazza

Cosmopolitan: “Most Anticipated Books for 2018” Elle: “Best Books to Read This Summer” Goop: “15 Books We’re Reading This Summer” People: “Best Summer Books” PopSugar: “25 Best New Books to Put in Your Beach Bag This Summer” Refinery29: “Brilliant Books to Bring to the Beach This Summer” Vulture: “18 Books We Can't Wait to Read This Summer” “The essential political novel for the 2018 midterms.” —Salon “This political novel is comically accurate.” —New York Post From Jo Piazza, the bestselling author of The Knock Off, How to Be Married, and Fitness Junkie, comes an exciting, insightful novel about what happens when a woman wants it all—political power, a happy marriage, and happiness—but isn’t sure just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to get it. Charlotte Walsh is running for Senate in the most important race in the country during a midterm election that will decide the balance of power in Congress. Still reeling from a presidential election that shocked and divided the country and inspired by the chance to make a difference, she’s left behind her high-powered job in Silicon Valley and returned, with her husband Max and their three young daughters, to her downtrodden Pennsylvania hometown to run in the Rust Belt state. Once the campaign gets underway, Charlotte is blindsided by just how dirty her opponent is willing to fight, how harshly she is judged by the press and her peers, and how exhausting it becomes to navigate a marriage with an increasingly ambivalent and often resentful husband. When the opposition uncovers a secret that could threaten not just her campaign but everything Charlotte holds dear, she has to decide just how badly she wants to win and at what cost. A searing, suspenseful story of political ambition, marriage, class, sexual politics, and infidelity, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win is an insightful portrait of what it takes for a woman to run for national office in America today. In a dramatic political moment like no other with more women running for office than ever before, Jo Piazza’s novel is timely, engrossing, and perfect for readers on both sides of the aisle.

Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win

Abigail Chapman

Amy Thibodeau

3.5. Solid and quick read but a little salacious and the ending was unsatisfying.

Allyson Marrs

Review originally published: https://www.allysonmarrs.com/punctuat...

Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win. And how many women are “allowed” to ever admit that ambition? This is the book women needed after the 2017 election: it’s timely, insightful, and a page-turner. Set right after Trump wins the Presidential election (yes, this is still fiction though), Charlotte Walsh — a Silicon Valley COO of a hugely successful tech company — decides to run for Senate in her home state of Pennsylvania. The incumbent is a thrice-married philanderer in his 80s. He’s worked to ban Planned Parenthood as is as much a radical conservative as they come. And he’s had his Senate seat for decades, often running unopposed.

Charlotte is an intelligent, capable, strong woman. Even when the campaign begins to change her, I’m still rooting for her, because you know she’s still there. You know her intentions are still pure: she wants to change the bigoted, biased status quo and help people find jobs and secure affordable healthcare.

While we see Charlotte dominate interviews and thoughtfully answer questions about policy, we more frequently see her subjected to fashion criticism, and dismissal of her capabilities because of her gender. She’s also accused of being a bad mother and a cold wife — all because she dares to have ambition.

These scenes, of course, called up what happened to Hilary Clinton during the 2017 election. Where her looks were judged more than her ideas. Where her emails were a bigger scandal than Trump’s racial, religious, and gender slurs. Because this book is really a reflection of reality, and a reminder of the crucial, damming rule: women are not allowed to make mistakes; men are expected to. Above all else, women must be likable to succeed, no matter their brains, experience, or capabilities.

And Charlotte does make mistakes. And past ones resurface as journalists circle for the next big story. While that mistake is not a big literary surprise, it did fit well within the narrative. And something I appreciate about this book overall. It would be easy to make this story into a ruthless tale of tabloid fodder. To make it outlandish and entertaining through dramatics. Instead, it’s a well-paced, well-told narrative, with characters being introduced at the exact right time, the plot steadily building, and the events eerily accurate (and infuriating). 

I loved it, and I loved how it’s unabashedly empowering, yet subtly encouraging for other women to follow suit. Because it’s not telling readers to do anything; it’s reminding us what has already been done to women in the political landscape, and that alone is enough to inspire action.

Read this. Please, just read this book. (Sensitive, overly privileged males need not apply.)

**Spoilers Ahead**

Don’t read this section if you don’t want to be spoiled. 

My singular complaint about this book is the ending. I understand that Piazza didn’t want to write one, so that we could draw our own conclusions, and construct an ending we needed (her author’s note says as much). But truthfully, as a reader, that feels like a copout. It is the author’s job to write an ending. It’s hard work. And she says that very thing, explaining that she wrote several versions. But you still have to choose. You have to end your story. I’m a purist that way.

Yes, I understand the idea of letting a reader make up their own, so they maybe don’t leave disappointed, but to be with a character for hundreds of pages, you want to know what happens to her. If she wins, I want to celebrate that. If she loses, I want to empathize with that. And you know what — we women had to suffer through a gutting loss in 2017. The least Piazza could have done is given us this one win. Charlotte Walsh deserved it.

Chelsea White

I couldn't decide if I liked this book or hated it the entire way through. All the characters are real and flawed, but some were flawed in ways that I thought would play in a bigger role, such as Paul with his addiction. I do appreciate how Piazza showed the harsh realities of campaigning and striving to win, and how she had Charlotte grapple with her decisions and her promises vs what she would be able to deliver. It was a good reminder that all people are just people, which means they're flawed, have secrets, desires and goals that they may be ashamed of when trying to put on a good face for the public.

Sarah Williams

4.5/5 stars

“Only let the world see half of your ambition. Half of the world can’t handle seeing it at all.”

I’ve been struggling with what exactly to say in this review. Not because I can’t find things to say that I liked—rather, I’m having a hard time articulating how I enjoyed this book, but at the same time it made me sick. I mean this as an absolute compliment to Piazza. This book is unflinchingly honest and razor sharp. It peels back the dermis of politics to reveal a gory mess of muscle and blood and bone. 

I couldn’t help but wonder all through this: Why do we force candidates and their families to undergo such brutal campaign cycles? What end does it serve? Why have we essentially made humiliation and exposure the price to pay for certain forms of civil service? 

I won’t spoil anything, but I loved the ending. In the end, whether Charlotte Walsh wins or loses isn’t important—her victory won’t erase the pain of her brutal election cycle, and a loss wou

Ana Couto

Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win centers around a woman (Charlotte Walsh) who’s the CEO of a tech company in Silicon Valley, but she gives up that gig to run for Senate in her home state of Pennsylvania. Overall I enjoyed this story; it was interesting to get a behind-the-scenes look at the mechanisms of a political campaign, especially one headed by a woman. I do think there was a bit too much of a focus on Charlotte’s relationship with her husband — he wasn’t always supportive and at times it felt like her world revolved around him. It would be refreshing to see a story in which men don’t feel threatened by their wives’ successes and ambitions. In general though, the writing was good and it was still an interesting story nonetheless, especially when taking the 2016 US Presidential Election into consideration.

Jessica 

As a note, a copy of this novel was sent to me via NetGalley by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not effect my opinions in any way. Review also posted here to Booked J. 

Okay, okay--here we go: this was such a fun book and not at all what I was expecting! Although, I'm not sure what I was expecting to begin with. So, there's that. It's possible I picked this book because of its minimal but still cute cover, but we're not going to talk about that. Whatever it was that I had been expecting, was not what the book served me and at the end of the day I'm 100% okay with that.

I've only read one book of Jo Piazza's in the past and that was, of course, The Knockoff. Which was fun in its own right. I found Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win to be just a bit better and a lot smarter than The Knockoff but, ultimately, they are entirely different stories with entirely different meanings. Both are of the same vein and are quick, light reads to finish in one--or a few--sittings. Piazza takes a bit more of a political stance in her premise of Charlotte and I adored this quality.

In this day and age, it's always powerful to see women shaking up the political game. Fiction or not, I am here for it. It provides a nice and even, temporary, distraction from the present trashfire that is the U.S. government. Plus, you have to respect and appreciate the pure ambition of the characters in this book.

There's this underlying tone of honesty and frankness towards our own political climate in Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, and that would definitely be my favourite part about the novel. It's in-your-face with its honesty and if honesty isn't what you like, then this book isn't for you. For me, it makes me wish our beloved narrator was real. She shows us a reminder that sexism is still highly prevalent in our modern world, but I think--at this point--it's fair to say that we don't need a reminder.

I thought that Piazza really nailed it with tone in this book and balanced everything quite evenly. There was a lot to it that I would have changed, or added, but that's more-or-less about personal preference, not a defining quality of the book. I'd still recommend it in a heartbeat because it's an escape, but it's also very true-to-life and that's essential to making a good novel with such a premise.

Overall, I enjoyed Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win much more than I expected. Fun, honest and to the point, you really can't miss--or go wrong--with Jo Piazza's latest release.

Abigail Chapman &
Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win by Jo Piazza

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