A page-turner, a blood-boiler, a heartbreaker, and a spine-tingler, "Catch and Kill" is such an important read. Though of course most people are (now) aware that corporate coverups of sexual misconduct have been orchestrated at the highest levels, I think an understanding of how exactly these coverups happen is a critical piece of it that you can only get from taking a deep dive into a book like this.

The ease with which powerful men in this book steamroll and intimidate women is a large part of the horror, and it's exacerbated a zillion times over when you see the pains that executives, perpetrators' ~friends in high places~, take to ensure these stories never see the light of day. You leave with the same question everyone's been asking: how can so many people have been ok covering this up for so long? It's a really strangling question, especially for a woman, and makes you wonder how many inappropriate things go on that are deemed too much trouble to correct.

One of the more unexpected revelations of this book was also the EXTREME methods that powerful people have access to in order to intimidate people; I really had no idea the lengths that someone like Weinstein could go to to dig up dirt and scare victims into silence. It's not just career retribution, which of course is at the top of the list as a silencing technique; but secret quasi-military spy operations? Double agents willing to lie to your face and put you on a dossier? Partnerships with media agencies who will pay for stories just to snuff them? Scary stuff that I had no intimate knowledge about, and that makes it much clearer how hard it is both to speak up and then also be believed.

I'm so glad Ronan Farrow refused to drop his reporting on this story, and that he found an outlet willing to support him rather than shut him up.