Name: Impostor Syndrome
ISBN: 9780063090378

Kathy Wang

"From the critically acclaimed author of Family Trust comes a new satire, exploring the fiercely competitive world of women in Silicon Valley in a thrilling tale of foreign espionage and personal secrets"--

A Novel

Impostor Syndrome

Vicky (A City Girl's Thoughts)

T & CW: Bacchanal (orgy party with drugs and alcohol), infidelity/cheating, assault

The ending was a letdown. I like how this was not only a critique of the American Dream for 1st generation Asian-Americans, but also how it affects immigrants from countries that are considered the U.S. government's enemy. Julia is unlikeable but I can empathise with her struggles. However the ending just...came. There's no closure, its open-ended. If you're new to the analyzation of the American Dream then you might enjoy this but other than that Kathy Wang didn't touch on anything new. Full review to come

Jordan /

Chelsea White

I found the concept behind "Imposter Syndrome" incredibly interesting; a Russian spy leads the head of a fictional Facebook-esque tech company that's part of everyone's lives. Abuses of power and privacy happen for the sake of gathering information, and all of it is discovered by an underling who really shouldn't have fallen as low as she did in the Tangerine totem. Overall I liked the story, and the intrigue of a modern day spy with a HUGE amount of power. There were some aspects of the story that I found annoying (Charlie is... in need of therapy because he's clearly frustrated/jealous of Julia), but overall it was a good book that kept me reading!

A sharp and prescient novel about women in the workplace, the power of Big Tech, and the looming threat of foreign espionage from Kathy Wang, "a skilled satirist of the northern California dream" (Harper's Bazaar) In 2006 Julia Lerner is living in Moscow, a recent university graduate in computer science, when she's recruited by Russia's largest intelligence agency. By 2018 she's in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of America's most famous technology companies. In between her executive management (make offers to promising startups, crush them and copy their features if they refuse); self promotion (check out her latest op-ed in the WSJ, on Work/Life Balance 2.0); and work in gender equality (transfer the most annoying females from her team), she funnels intelligence back to the motherland. But now Russia's asking for more, and Julia's getting nervous. Alice Lu is a first generation Chinese American whose parents are delighted she's working at Tangerine (such a successful company!). Too bad she's slogging away in the lower echelons, recently dumped, and now sharing her expensive two-bedroom apartment with her cousin Cheri, a perennial "founder's girlfriend". One afternoon, while performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity, and now she's burdened with two powerful but distressing suspicions: Tangerine's privacy settings aren't as rigorous as the company claims they are, and the person abusing this loophole might be Julia Lerner herself. The closer Alice gets to Julia, the more Julia questions her own loyalties. Russia may have placed her in the Valley, but she's the one who built her career; isn't she entitled to protect the lifestyle she's earned? Part page-turning cat-and-mouse chase, part sharp and hilarious satire, Impostor Syndrome is a shrewdly-observed examination of women in tech, Silicon Valley hubris, and the rarely fulfilled but ever-attractive promise of the American Dream.

Linn 

i dont even think i knew what was going on by the end because i just stopped caring

Christine Liu

Julia Lerner is a woman who seems to have it all. An incredible house, a picture perfect marriage, and she's second in command at Tangerine, one of Silicon Valley's biggest tech companies. She also happens to be a Russian spy, plucked from a grim childhood in an orphanage and strategically trained to rise into the upper echelons of the American corporate world so that she can be in a position to pass on crucial information on important individuals gleaned from Tangerine's servers. Alice Lu is an IT grunt at Tangerine, working a thankless job that she's overqualified for, when she notices some unusual data transfers one day and decides to probe further.

I don't know much about tech companies or Silicon Valley corporate culture (although I hear it's not great for women of color), but I binged all 357 pages of this book in one day. Kathy Wang's writing is absolutely captivating, and I eagerly devoured page after page, chapter after chapter. Although the blurb describes this book as a cat and mouse chase, I found it to be less a spy thriller and more a deep and thoughtful character study of two very different women in a male dominated field.

I appreciate a book that makes its characters authentic, fully realized people, and the characters in this book were complex and compelling — from Julia and Alice to Alice's Chinese immigrant parents and Leo, Julia's SGB handler. However, the ending feels a bit rushed, and I was left feeling like we didn't get to see Julia and Alice's full character arcs. I especially felt that Alice's story was unresolved. But this book tackles some big ideas in a way that is smart and funny, and is overall a delightful read.

Impostor Syndrome A Novel

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