Katie Bradley is back in New York after a year in Michigan. She took a year to help take care of her mother, diagnosed with cancer, and to work on a book about an internet start-up. But now she’s back in Manhattan to be with her sister Hana and their friends Eleanor and Mikki as Eleanor takes her ground-breaking woman empowering co-working space The Herd to new heights. They are expanding their operations, opening new locations, and staying exclusive, much to the dismay of Eleanor’s adversaries and internet trolls, The Antiherd.

Katie’s first day at The Herd, she finds out that someone had broken in overnight to vandalize the Gleam Room, a room devoted to Gleam cosmetics, Eleanor’s first company. Clearly whoever wrote the malicious phrase on the wall was targeting Eleanor. Now Katie and her journalist brain can’t seem to stop trying to figure out who would write that. And with her book on the internet start-up dying in her hands, she needs a new idea to pitch to her agent and publisher. Why not write about Eleanor, from an insider’s point of view? Katie had been friends with her since she was a high-schooler visiting Hana and Mikki and Eleanor at Harvard.

And now there’s a big announcement coming. Eleanor is being cagey, keeping it a secret, but Katie knows that it will only improve her chances at selling this new book to a publisher. And right as the press is poised to hear the big changes for The Herd, Eleanor disappears. Katie has to scramble to figure out what’s happened to her friend, and to keep her book deal in play.

Is the Antiherd behind the disappearance? Did Eleanor leave on her own? Or is the answer something far darker? It’s only as Katie and Hana and Mikki try to figure out the truth about Eleanor that they discover what it means to be women working together towards empowerment and unity.

Andrea Bartz is back with The Herd, a taut story about women taking on the things that stand in their way and discovering success by being honest with themselves. It’s a complicated story, told in alternating points of view by the sisters Bradley. Katie and Hana offer up their lives and lifestyles to give the story dimension and attitude, empathy and insight. And I loved every page.

I thought The Herd offered a thrilling story along with the understanding that women have just as much entitlement to succeed, to fail, to love, to lie, and to fight their way to the top as any man. These woman are fierce, smart and successful, each in her own way, but also flawed and cunning and striving for more. It’s a powerful novel with strong characters, and I recommend it to anyone who isn’t afraid of ambitious women trying to live their best lives.

Galleys for The Herd were provided by Ballantine Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.