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A review by jackiehorne
Heartbreak for Hire by Sonia Hartl
Did not finish book.
DNF at 50%
A high-concept perversion of feminism: our female protagonist works for Heartbreak for Hire, a company that you can hire to exact revenge on men who have done you wrong. But when the female company owner decides to add men to her employee roster, you kinda have to wonder about how honest her female-empowerment schtick is. Even the narrator wonders ("everything Margo had sold us on, which now turned out to be nothing but a fluffy fantasy, full of vague mission statements, pink hats, and empty promises. At the end of the day, she didn't give a shit about women, but she'd found a way to commodify feminism for a while" (131), although not enough to quit her job. Apparently more silly revenge hijinks ensue. There's a lot of misogyny towards the protagonist's professor mother, and a lot of looking down on academics for how cutthroat and disloyal they are (rather than critiquing academia for of the way capitalism has turned it into space for exploiting workers), which only added to the false feminism of the story. A big disappointment.
A high-concept perversion of feminism: our female protagonist works for Heartbreak for Hire, a company that you can hire to exact revenge on men who have done you wrong. But when the female company owner decides to add men to her employee roster, you kinda have to wonder about how honest her female-empowerment schtick is. Even the narrator wonders ("everything Margo had sold us on, which now turned out to be nothing but a fluffy fantasy, full of vague mission statements, pink hats, and empty promises. At the end of the day, she didn't give a shit about women, but she'd found a way to commodify feminism for a while" (131), although not enough to quit her job. Apparently more silly revenge hijinks ensue. There's a lot of misogyny towards the protagonist's professor mother, and a lot of looking down on academics for how cutthroat and disloyal they are (rather than critiquing academia for of the way capitalism has turned it into space for exploiting workers), which only added to the false feminism of the story. A big disappointment.