She Said

I just recently heard of this book through the trailer for the movie adaptation. This book focuses on the women who came together to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault.

This wasn’t the first time that people had named him as a person who assaulted women. It was an open secret in Hollywood. But up until this time no one had ever cared enough or was powerful enough to stop him. Many of the women involved had signed non-disclosure agreements that prohibited them from speaking to the press. The journalists had to find other ways to prove what had been happening. They were able to follow the money from those settlements to show that Weinstein had a pattern of paying off women.

The addition of the story of Christine Blasey Ford at the end was interesting but didn’t seem to fit in this book at all. It seemed tacked on. The only thing tying it together was that they had done an article on her and invited her to a large joint interview with women from sexual assault articles that they had written.

This was a good audiobook but I don’t know how well it will translate as a movie. I had it when movies are more “inspired by” real events rather than staying true to the story. So much of the book relies on the stories of Ashley Judd and Gwyneth Paltrow. According to IMDB, they aren’t being portrayed in the movie version. There are characters listed who aren’t in the book. I don’t have high hopes.