You might have heard of a real-life counterpart to the Herd, the women-only coworking space (complete with beauty bar, organic cafeteria and rainbow-hued bookshelves) at the center of Andrea Bartz’s new novel of the same name. Let’s hope that it doesn’t hide anything near the kind of secrets and lies that lurk behind the Instagram-ready façade of the Herd.

In Bartz’s latest book, the Herd is run by a triumvirate of powerful, beautiful women, all of whom have been friends since they met at Harvard. At the center is Eleanor, the Herd’s founder, who first established her reputation and fortune as the founder of a cosmetics and lifestyle brand. She always has kept her two best friends in the fold: Mikki, an avant-garde artist and free spirit who does the interior design work for the Herd, and Hana, a PR genius who makes sure that the Herd (and, by extension, Eleanor) is profiled in the best possible light.

"THE HERD blows the airbrushed façade off feminist capitalism in a particularly stark way.... [T]he interpersonal dynamics among friends, sisters and lovers remain explosive and endlessly fascinating."

The Herd seems poised for huge success. It is opening new offshoots of its remarkably popular home base in Manhattan, and (as Eleanor knows, even if her friends don’t yet) is about to be acquired by a huge tech firm, ensuring its ongoing success --- and Eleanor’s continued good fortune.

All is not perfect, though, despite Hana’s best efforts to portray it as such. An online activist group calling itself the Anti-Herd is demanding that the Herd be subject to discrimination laws since it bars membership to men. And someone is painting offensive graffiti in all of its locations. Into this somewhat unstable situation lands Katie, Hana’s younger sister. She has known Mikki and Eleanor since they were teaching her the ropes of drinking and partying when she was in high school and they were in college. But now Katie is an investigative reporter, back in New York after spending a year in her home state of Michigan, caring for her ill mother and gathering material for a book project about the fake news industry.

However, that project collapsed, for reasons Katie can’t talk about. Now she’s on the hunt for a new topic so that her agent doesn’t disown her and she doesn’t have to give back her advance. An unauthorized biography of Eleanor and the origins of the Herd seems like just the ticket --- but just as Katie is beginning to finagle her way into the Herd’s inner circle, things start to go horribly wrong.

THE HERD blows the airbrushed façade off feminist capitalism in a particularly stark way. As secrets come to light and betrayals start to pile up (along with the bodies), Bartz’s novel questions if powerful women like Eleanor can rise to the top without stomping on quite a few stilettoed toes along the way. At times, the pace gets a bit bogged down with minutiae, contributing to questions of means, motive and opportunity. But even if the mystery plot gets a tad draggy, the interpersonal dynamics among friends, sisters and lovers remain explosive and endlessly fascinating.