Snake Oil by Kelsey Rae Dimberg
Published by Mariner Books
Publication date: September 17, 2024
Genres: Book Clubs, Debut, Fiction, Contemporary, Social Issues
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Three women, one company. Set in the wellness industry Snake Oil is about the woman who starts the company and two of the women who work for her. At opposite ends of the spectrum, one is a fervent believer in the company’s mission while the other avidly opposes it, but needs the paycheck. When the novel opens a clinical trial for a new supplement is wrapping up. It’s release and the predicted response will secure a wildly profitable move from private to public status. Whether that’s good or bad is the circuitous path this novel runs along.
Radical is Rhoda’s wellness company, born from her desire to empower women and her aspirational Instagram account. Dani and Cecelia work in the Customer Worship department, the frontlines of the company. For Dani it’s almost a calling; she believes in Rhoda and Radical to that degree. Cecilia does not. In fact, she secretly runs a Twitter account that mocks everything Rhoda and the company espouse. As Radical prepares for its IPO this account is starting to generate bad press.
Author Kelsey Rae Dimberg stacks the deck a bit in Snake Oil by making each character extreme in their position. Dani is a zealot in her beliefs about Radical. Initially, it comes off as understandable, but as the novel progresses, it starts to make less sense. Cecilia is the questioner, the pushback person, the malcontent. All of which is fine but it becomes clear it’s not just about the company. Everything in her world is horrible and it’s everyone else’s fault. Rhoda is a highly driven, ambitious entrepreneur who’s lost her way from an initial desire to help women. Her very identity becomes linked to her company making it harder and harder to come clean or walk away. She believes “No Radical, no Rhoda”.
This is the kind of novel and writing I love delving into. Dimberg presents the flaws of her characters up against who they were and who they want to be. All amidst the power dynamics of a woman reliant on a man for financial support of her women’s company. It’s a powder keg and if I’d stopped reading after the penultimate chapter I would have given Snake Oil four stars, thanks to the premise and great writing. But the final chapter is a wrap-up, a kind of epilogue, and when I finished that I wanted to dropkick the book across the room (of course I did not do that). I was so furious it’s taken me two months to write this review. And then…I re-read the last chapter and it made an odd kind of sense even though it contains an element I simply can’t buy into, leaving me conflicted. Which is why Snake Oil was almost, but not quite, successful reading for me.
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