What the fuck? I said to myself when I picked up this book at the library and realized it was a first person POV alternate history novel about Hillary Clinton née Rodham. I was intrigued but also kind of appalled by the concept - there's something that strikes me as... tasteless, I guess, about writing an AU of a real person's life while they're still alive and profiting off of it. That said, I doubt that someone of Hillary Rodham Clinton's fame and power would allow such a book to exist without her permission.

What the fuck? I continued to think as I read Rodham. It's written more or less like a political memoir - though with more honesty and more risque details. We meet Hillary in the late 60s and follow her to 2016, though we jump around in time, with some years coming to us as flashbacks, and some year summarized down to a few sentences. The premise, of course, is that Hillary meets Bill, dates him, but doesn't marry him. And because of that, it ends up being weirdly like a one-that-got-away romance? (Side Note: Kinda of funny in a fucked up way to

write a book that basically says "If you hadn't married your husband, you wouldn't have taken the biggest L of your life." Like that's embarrassing.

)

Rodham gives us intimate details, like Bill Clinton's height (he's 6'2", his tallness is referenced constantly), what sex is like with him (good but kind of boring), and how he has to have the agency in their relationship even in this girlboss trainwreck (why is he the one who decides they shouldn't get married???). It gives us things I never wanted to see, like Hillary Clinton experiencing widespread lesbophobia, Donald Trump endorsing her for president for some reason (that felt masturbatory in the bad way I fear), and a last minute fake dating subplot. And it left me thinking, at the very end, what the fuck did I just read?

My friends really liked hearing me talk about it in the groupchat, though. That's why I finished it. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're a hater like me.