Are all wellness products fake, Kelsey Rae Dimberg asks in her aptly titled sophomore novel “Snake Oil.”
Dimberg, a former employee of Google and Groupon, anchors her fictional work with real-world allusions to GOOP, Elizabeth Holmes, and other troubled startup founders. She combines interlocking stories of three women employed at the same wellness startup with the company’s growing pains.
“Snake Oil” is part mystery, behind-the-scenes examination of unicorn creation, and a commentary on women’s aspirations to lead the way and claim full ownership of their ideas and bodies.
Character Analysis
Main Characters
Rhoda West
Dani Lang
Cecelia Cole
Jason
Rhoda West, founder of Goop-like women’s wellness startup Radical. The career-oriented leader is hyperfocused on maintaining control over her ever-expanding business while cultivating a sympathetic and relatable public persona. She purports to support women and their healthy journeys but isn’t above manipulating data and omitting necessary information to present a more palatable story.
When she isn’t schmoozing potential investors, Rhoda is at the Radical office speaking with her team, leading the all-hands morning meeting, and closely monitoring the development of new products. Her limited spare time is spent with fiance, Gavin, who sold his startup and is now living a life of surfing, photography and gardening.
Dani Lang, 27, is an acolyte of Rhoda’s Radical philosophy. She moved from Chicago to San Francisco nearly three years earlier after hearing Rhoda’s story of creating Radical to overcome her undiagnosed illness. The story moved Dani whose mother recently died from cancer.
After starting a new chapter in California, Dani found her boyfriend Trevor and cynical co-worker Cecelia. She lives with Trevor and sees Cecelia nearly every workday, when her friend isn’t sick and working from home.
Cecelia Cole’s mystery ailments leave her lying curled up in her small, dusty rented room with a hot water bottle and a bottle of pain relievers. The aspiring writer accepted a job with Radical believing in the power of the all-natural ingredients Rhoda claimed cured her and improved the lives of thousands of Radical customers.
The cynical and unforgiving side of Cecelia appeared when the exorbitantly expensive Femme Vitale wellness enhancer from Radical failed to improve her condition. Once she realized Rhoda and Radical were over promising and under delivering for customers, Cecelia channeled her pent-up frustration and wordsmith skills into the @Radicalidocy account. She consistently posted on it with insider news from Radical and her own observations. The account accrued thousands of followers and began to unnerve Rhoda and her investors.
Jason is Rhoda’s oldest and most trusted advisor. He’s helped her grow Radical from a small passion project into a multi-million dollar Silicon Valley darling. In the process, Jason has become a paternalistic figure that Rhoda enjoys challenging and one she hopes to overpower with board votes.
He still exerts some level of control over her and the company and is always maneuvering to keep it. A past investment that ended badly has left him scarred and paranoid about Rhoda tanking Radical.
Plot Summary
Being an ambitious woman in Silicon Valley can be dangerous to your health.
Rhoda West followed her passions and started a wellness company from her Stanford University dorm room. Years of hustling have brought her thriving wellness company, Radical, to the cusp of being a unicorn with a $1 billion valuation.
She’s not the only Radical employee hitting major life milestones.
Dani Lang, highest-performing customer worship representative, is unexpectedly pregnant and struggling to deal with fatigue and nausea without revealing her condition to anyone at work. She’s excited about the baby but worries about money, finding a bigger apartment, and staying in the drug trial for Radical’s all-natural antidepressant.
In contrast to Rhoda’s and Dani’s successes, Cecelia Cole continues to struggle with her undiagnosed health issues and her increasing unhappiness with her job. She, like Dani, works in customer support at Radical and uses information from the office to create vitriolic posts on X under the account name @Radicalidiocy.
Rhoda and the Radical team initially dismiss the antagonistic social media account. With Radical’s social media consistently performing well, they fail to consider how quickly the tides can turn.
The Conflict
A serendipitous meeting with a drunk website editor at a party celebrating Dani gives plants the idea of writing an expose about Radical in Cecelia’s head. In preparation, she sneaks into the company’s private research facility, the Well, where Radical’s formulas are created and Dani participates in the Lift study.
She runs into Dani while in the Well and quickly realizes her closest co-worker is pregnant and attempting to keep it secret from Radical. The two women momentarily squabble, but Cecelia agrees to keep quiet about her friend’s condition.
As Rhoda and her advisor, Jason, meet with eager investors, they learn many are concerned about the negative publicity from @Radicalidiocy and how the account’s comments may slow growth. In particular, a post about Radical changing the formula of its best-selling skin polish to reduce the cost of ingredients causes customers to cancel their orders in droves and overwhelm customer support with questions.
Rhoda interrogates her core team about who could be behind @Radicalidiocy, but no one knows who the traitor is. The snarky comments about Rhoda’s leadership and lack of support and respect for Radical employees continues unabated while Rhoda grows increasingly impatient and worried about finding the source.
Seeing a serious customer service backlog and a series of GIFs and jokes in the employee Slack, Rhoda admonishes the team for failing to adequately address customer concerns. The terse feedback gives Cecelia an idea for her Megaphone blog: a two-faced founder.
Cecelia emails Megaphone editor, Leandra French, and proposes her idea: two-faced founder. She scours Radical’s Slack archives for evidence of Rhoda’s bad temper. Rather than finding tantrums, Cecelia learns Dani is going to be fired for being pregnant and replaced with two customer service reps.
She sits in the office after hours contemplating whether to tell Dani the news. Cecelia decides Dani would doubt her, then be angry with her for casting aspersions upon Radical and Rhoda. Instead, she sends a screenshot of the Slack conversation to Leandra, who approves it for a blog on Megaphone.
A few days later Cecelia’s story headlined “The Toxic Reality Inside a Wellness Startup” goes live on Megaphone. It’s immediately seized on by both the general public and Radical. Dani soon recognizes herself referenced as “Lauren,” a true believer who’s being exploited by Rhoda’s lies.
Rhoda’s mind is full of plans to maintain a majority share of Radical even as the company attempts to reach a $1 billion valuation with new investors. She sees the startup as an extension of herself and refuses to allow money managers to remove her creative control.
The Death
Jason is dubious about allowing Rhoda to maintain 58% of Radical going forward. They begin to have tense discussions about it after the strong response to Cecelia’s anonymous blog post.
She learns the bad publicity from Cecelia’s social media posts and Megaphone article have cost Radical unicorn status. The company failed to meet its goal of a $1 billion valuation, and is instead valued at $800 million.
Rhoda also hires a high-powered attorney to subpoena Cecelia and force Megaphone to remove her article. They also agree to fire Cecelia and threaten her with a lawsuit for past and future violations of her non-disclosure agreement.
Dani is also promoted to the position of voice on Radical’s marketing team based on her dream analysis writing from the Lift trial. Many of the team oppose her new role, but Rhoda likes Dani’s earnestness and wants to prove Cecelia’s vitriolic rant wrong.
With her dwindling social media power, Cecelia sends out multiple posts about being fired and encouraging people to boycott Radical that yield diminishing returns. She’s also being followed and is evicted from her small one-bedroom apartment, which leads her to pack up her meager belongings and visit Dani one last time.
Cecelia leaves a suitcase with her former colleague and promises to return for it the next day. Dani places Cecelia’s belongings in her closet and continues to focus on her new role at Radical.
Knowing she’s moving to California, Cecelia sneaks into a party celebrating Radical. She goes so far as to drop a note onto Rhoda’s desk, steal her office key card, and wear her trench coat as she takes a final walk up to the roof. It’s there, viewing the stars and preparing to leave Radical for good that she’s abruptly pushed to her death.
The Fallout
Cecelia’s unexpected demise casts an even deeper shadow over Radical, especially because the public initially believes the body is Rhoda. The board members, Radical staff, customers and media all think Rhoda died at the celebration.
Only Dani takes the initiative to visit the company CEO at her compound outside of San Francisco. Rhoda is astounded to learn that people think she’s dead and cannot understand why no one contacted her.
The police investigate Cecelia’s death amid growing public outcries and disruptions at Radical. Ultimately, Rhoda manipulates data to make it look as though Cecelia took her own life because of her illness and legal troubles.
With the former employee’s demise fading from the headlines, Rhoda returns to planning the Life launch with Dani writing the copy. The two women make a formidable team, but Dani questions Rhoda’s methods of leaving out key details to boost Lift’s numbers.
Rhoda knows Jason and other board members want to remove her as CEO of Radical in light of recent bad press. She keeps a close eye on Jason and the women with whom he’s speaking, including members of the Radical staff she eventually fires.
Mystery Solved
Dani’s suspicions of how Rhoda and Radical misrepresent data lead her to examine data to find Cecelia wasn’t on the rooftop by herself when she died. Another Radical associate was with her and pushed the ex-employee to her death.
On the eve of her wedding, Rhoda realizes Jason is the one who pushed Cecelia to her death. He confused her with Rhoda because of the trench coat and the darkness of the party.
When Dani comes to the same conclusion, she drives back to her boss’ remote home and plans to inform her. She sees Rhoda and Jason having an intense discussion on a set of stairs outside and decides to protect Rhoda for further harm.
The pregnant Dani pushes the middle-aged man down a fight of steep stairs to his death. Rhoda immediately crafts a plan to move his corpse to a swimming area a few miles away and make his untimely passing look like drowning.
Happy Endings
Rhoda remains in charge of Radical partnering with Dani on mother-friendly products. She publicly laments Jason’s death but is relieved privately.
Dani welcomes her daughter, Naomi, with a midwife doing a home birth for an article on Radical’s website.
Final Thoughts
“Snake Oil” may get lost in the glut of recently released mysteries and thrillers centered on the wellness industry.
It offers the hallmarks of strong and distinctive female characters, multiple plots, and an emphasis on the power of trusting women. But, Dimberg’s sophomore novel also veers into the ugly side of venture capital funding and the power struggles of board rooms.
“Snake Oil” is recommended for readers who enjoy character-driven dramas about woman-run startups with a subplot of sabotage and murder. Those seeking a murder mystery may be disappointed with Rhoda’s struggle to secure funding for Radical.
Rating
My rating is 3.75/5 stars.
Book Details
Title: “Snake Oil”
Author: Kelsey Rae Dimberg
Year of Publication: 2024
Number of Pages: 334 pages
Check out the review of “Rouge” by Mona Awad for another book about the dark underbelly of the wellness industry.
