This was a really fun, Devil Wears Prada/Disclosure mash-up, where the patriarchy of Silicon Valley clashes with high New York fashion, but brought bang up to date by the added pressure and intensive scrutiny of social media.
Zoe is a New York fashion journalist whose values and creativity are being stifled by an overpowering boss. She’s offered the opportunity to apply her skills and knowledge to a Cali-start-up, where, from the outset, she feels out of her depth. (Imposter syndrome, anybody?) Antics ensue.
I thoroughly enjoyed this audio book, which was a fast-paced easy read with some serious underlying messages. There’s strong friendships, a little romance, a lot of chauvinism and misogyny, high fashion, influencers, body positivity and cafe culture. What’s not to love?
Five stars from me, and a big thank you to NetGalley and Headline audio for the chance to read an ARC.
Valley Verified is out now.

gifted by the publisher

Fashion columnist Zoe Zeng feels trapped in her New York company under her narrow-minded boss. So when an opportunity to work in an app startup based in Silicon Valley arises, Zoe jumps ship and moves across the country. But nothing is ever what it seems, especially in tech.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story examining the intersections of fashion & tech, and the ethics behind social media & machine learning. As someone who's worked in startups & lives in the Bay Area, I also deeply resonate with many plots. There's more telling than showing at times, but VV is an entertaining read with a fascinating premise overall.

Zoe makes a huge career pivot from working for a fashion magazine in NYC to a tech startup in Silicon Valley. Her new role as VP in marketing comes with many perks but her tech-minded coworkers won’t take her seriously or hear out her ideas. Although I dress in sweat suits most days and couldn’t completely relate to Zoe, I really enjoyed this uplifting novel. It’s about a young woman adapting to major life changes, finding her way in a male-dominated industry, and overcoming imposter syndrome. There is also a sprinkle of romance that felt organic and was a nice bonus. Through Zoe’s experience, Zhao tackles common occupational stereotypes, misogyny in the workplace, and the impact of technology on human relationships. A fun, light, and smart read.

Thank you to Berkley for this arc! All thoughts are my own.

Valley Verified centers around fashion loving Zoe Zeng as she transitions from a thankless fashion editorial job to a high level position at a fashion based app startup in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, Zoe feels in over her head as she deals with this cutthroat, male-dominated environment that leaves her feeling useless and inexperienced and the overarching theme is her learning how to #girlboss in this coming of age story.

I thought this was fine up until maybe 50% but then found myself skimming for most of the remainder. I recognize that I maybe don’t care about tech based stories as this is the third one I’ve tried in the more recent months and I’ve found that I have a really hard time connecting with the characters and the setting of Silicon Valley.

More so, I started to get really annoyed with Zoe by the midway mark of this book. I feel like she really regressed in her thinking and was very naive about the people she was working with. It was pretty obvious what was going on and I got very annoyed with her hatred of Lillian because like, girl, you’re the only two women in the office. Maybe have a bit of perspective of how she’s had to hold herself in this workspace before you arrived? Just some of Zoe’s thinking in this book felt like she was a teenager and I think she wouldn’t have found herself in some of the positions she was in if she had just a little bit of forethought.

The romance was very lackluster as well and felt like much of that storyline was in the background. I didn’t feel a lot of chemistry between the two. I did enjoy some of these side characters, especially Bernadette. I would enjoy a book about Ms. Bernie and her story.

Overall, this was fine but it was honestly a little forgettable. I read this last week and I’m already forgetting some names and most of the scenes. I still want to read Kyla’s debut because I have it and I’ve heard fun things about that one, but this book missed the mark for me.

This was fine and fun, though it was a little bit caught up with never making its mind whether it was a romance without a lot of romance or a roman à clef or just general fiction, and it especially had so much fun namedropping Silicon Valley shit that I think occasionally Zhao forgot when she was both namedropping real people AND namedropping the made-up versions of them as if they exist in the same universe, so that was sloppy.

Spoiler

Like there's a Kim Kardashian reference in a made-up character but also actual Kim Kardashian is referenced a few pages later.

Basically I think the failure here is in editing--a tighter novel would have picked either namedropping or clef-dropping, not both, and also I found myself constantly getting caught up with how the author's Singaporean-tinged, British-influenced English influenced all of the characters and the way they spoke, even though they were all supposed to be American-born, and it just kept throwing me because the rhythm was often off, the way they formed sentences wasn't accurate to the dialect of English they were supposed to be speaking, and the word choice was often British. Again, editing should have caught this! Do people not have internal ears when they read? (And write, not to place all the blame on editorial?) Sometimes I feel like Mugatu and like I'm the only person who notices when the wrong English for the location is being used in books and everyone else acts like they have no idea that English even has multiple dialects, which is actually like Mugatu but also a reverse Mugatu because what he notices is that they're all the same look, but anyway, I digress..

I can't tell whether

Spoiler

Lillian's obvious protection and predatory-cock-blocking (as in, blocking a predatory cock, not predatorily cock-blocking was obvious to me because I'm older than Zoe and I would have been just as dumb as Zoe at her age or if it was silly because Zoomers seem to be more aware of shit like that than I would have been even ten years ago?? Like there were many moments while I was reading this book where I just did not find things believable, but I honestly don't know if that's me being crotchety and old or if Zoe was just extremely wide-eyed and impressionable. I dunno. She felt off as a character to me.

3.5 stars. I enjoyed this book set at the crossroads of fashion and tech. I appreciated reading about the experience of some women in tech and the boys club that they often have to push back against. There were some friendships and relationships that were underdeveloped, but overall I found this to be an engaging read.