A review by arisbookcorner
It's Classified by Nicolle Wallace

2.0

IT's CLASSIFIED is breezy DC reading for anyone whose obsessed with politics and the inner working of the White House. The strength of this series is the details which is undoubtedly due to how much access Wallace had in her previous role, there are so many small details here that many readers (including myself) didn't know about how the White House runs and the day-to-day of a presidential administration. Those details are both fun and fascinating. I'm skeptical about this being a thinly veiled takedown of Sarah Palin. Maybe she's the initial inspiration but I had far more sympathy for Tara than I would ever have for Palin. I also think in the case of Palin it wasn't stress and mental illness that resulted in her being a poor choice for VP, it was her not being very bright. That being said Wallace handles Tara's anxiety and stress convincingly, allowing the reader to feel empathy for both Tara and Charlotte as they hurtle towards a mess of Tara's own making. But the author also treats Tara cruelly, taking great care to describe Tara's fat and portraying her kind heart as a weakness as opposed to praising Tara for being one of the few politicians left in DC whose able to feel things. There's also a very odd (but on brand for a book written by a Republican woman I guess) lack of sexism and discussion surrounding the challenges of being a woman in power when those moments would have fit naturally within the novel and provided a much needed bit of inspiration. Overall this book was ok, I wouldn't read it again and barely remember much from it except that there were too many plot points and all the previously mentioned points about character and narration bothered me immensely. The timing of this was interesting for me personally since I didn't realize Kramer would get impeached and I ended up reading it around the same time as our own impeachment debacle so that was somewhat enlightening.