OMG this book annoyed me so much! The writing was great, and it was so well investigated, but the characters drove me bonkers! To think that they’re all real people makes me even madder. I borrowed this book from my library back in the winter. I got about fifty pages in and was just so frustrated with it that I ran out of time and didn’t get to finish before someone else placed a hold. Then I kinda forgot about it for a while. Once I saw it come up on the app I listen to books I borrow from the library (shout out to Overdrive!), I was ecstatic. I wanted to finish the story to see how it all turned out, and I knew I’d have a better chance at that if someone else was reading it to me. I did end up listening to the last few hours on 1.2 and 1.4 times the original reading speed though. I was just soooo annoyed that people got away with so much for so long!
Anyway, for anyone who doesn’t know the story – this book is about Theranos. Elizabeth Holmes, who was a college dropout started a biotech company that aimed to test people’s blood with a small machine. She wanted it to test a finger prick, need a tiny amount of blood, be able to test a large battery of tests, and give results back to people in their homes. Obviously most of that is currently impossible, but she didn’t either know or care. I think she annoyed me so much because she reminded me of Trump. She was surrounded by the best and brightest scientists and tech people, and she basically ignored them at every turn. She had her “vision”, and whether it was possible or not, and whether people would get hurt or not didn’t matter. I think she’s a bad person, and I think her partner in crime Sonny is a bad person. Like I said – it was very well written, and super well researched, but also extremely frustrating. I gave it four stars because of the effort the author put into this story. Elizabeth Holmes gets no stars. She’s the worst. Thankfully, this book fulfills my cbr11bingo square for Listicle! It’s on the Best Non-Fiction of 2018 goodreads list: Best Non-Fiction of 2018
