How Far She’s Come by Holly Brown

Photo Credit: William Morrow

This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration.

How Far She’s Come

Summary: From the highly acclaimed author of Don’t Try to Find Me and This is Not Over comes the unforgettable, harrowing story of a young broadcast journalist who discovers a mysterious diary from a female broadcaster in 1991 featuring startling—and frightening—parallels to her own life.

Oh, how far she’s come…but how far will she have to go?

Twenty-four-year-old Cheyenne Florian has just received the kind of job offer that dreams are made of. On the strength of a few vlogs, she’s recruited to be the new correspondent on the recently hatched Independent News Network, INN.

With its slogan “Because independent thinking is the only way out,” INN strives to be exciting and innovative. Yet once Cheyenne joins the INN team, she’s disappointed to find age-old dynamics in play. A few of the female staff resent her meteoric rise, while some of the men are only too happy to welcome her. Even Edwin warns her to watch her back. And then there’s the diary left for her anonymously, written by a female broadcast journalist icon named Elyse Rohrbach in 1991. The mysterious diary is accompanied by a note, urging Cheyenne to learn from the past. Is it meant as inspiration and friendly advice—or as a warning? Still, she can’t see how it has anything to do with her…until disturbing events begin.

As more unsettling events unfold—events that appear as if someone is engineering the similarities in Cheyenne’s life to match those from Elyse’s past—it becomes clear that she is a pawn in a very twisted game. But Cheyenne is determined to rewrite the rules and play her own game. Though they’re separated by more than twenty-five years, Elyse and Cheyenne are learning the same lesson: Nothing is more threatening than a woman who doesn’t yet know her own power…

Traveling With T’s Thoughts:

You know, I wanted to like this book. I really did. I have debated about writing this review for some time because it’s such a timely subject…. but the truth is: I didn’t care for the book.

After I started reading, I debated about putting it down. Was it too recent in news headlines for me to be reading a fictionalized version? But, no, that was not the problem.

Cheyenne is part of the problem.

I felt sorry for her character being victimized for having an opinion- for having things done to her- thus leading her to becoming a disgraced vlogger. But, sometimes I couldn’t decide who the real Cheyenne was- was she a firey spitball who had opinions and didn’t care what you thought as long as she backed up her thoughts with facts? Was she using her good looks to get ahead? Was she only naive when it suited her, thus making her calculating and controlling?

The only thing I knew for sure about Cheyenne was that she was very good looking- a fact that was mentioned quite frequently.

Again, I wanted to root for Cheyenne, but it was just too hard.

The 2 things I liked about this book:

The diary parts and the cover.

Bottom line: For me, this is a hard pass. If you are interested in the behind the scenes of a news show, the power and the politics that go into it, and all the pitfalls that young and attractive reporters can fall into- then you may like it. Again, I wanted to root for Cheyenne, but I felt she did not live up the potential that the author had aspired for her.

*This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration. All thoughts and opinions are mine alone.*