In Robin Strong’s SPLENDID LITTLE SCHEMES, Vicky is a quintessential Type-A personality who only needs one more successful distributor to reach Royal Diamond status in the multi-level marketing business (MLM) Puremetics. This would allow her to make six figures; gain the adoration of her friends, blog readers, and fellow Mormon church-goers; and, most importantly, feel perfection. When she meets the new-in-town, sweatshirt-wearing Anna, she sees a project; Vicky loves a challenge. Little does she know that Anna accidentally met a group of women who call themselves the OWLS (the Old Wise Ladies’ Society) and want to expose the CEO of Puremetics, Christian White, for his myriad crimes: embezzlement, fraud, spousal abuse, and maybe even the murder of his long-missing wife. Anna struggles to embody the shining example of excellence she needs to be in order to rise through the Puremetics ranks—so much so that she soon realizes that, in order to take down Christian White, she must accomplish the biggest challenge of all: get Vicky on her side.
Interactions between characters as Vicky and Anna attempt to recruit new distributors show the diversity of experiences of people who sell products through an MLM business. While some are cutthroat, judgmental, picture-perfect images of success, many rely on the job for income and even self-worth. When Anna discusses Puremetics with another distributor, the woman, Rachel, says she felt forced to get a tummy tuck and then lie to buyers that the products helped her lose weight because her husband would leave her otherwise. He sees her as nothing more than a body: “‘My looks are the one thing everyone praises. Oh, what a nice smile you have! Wow, nobody would guess you’ve had five kids! Rachel, you’re so pretty, so thin, so perfect.’ The mocking tone in Rachel’s voice wasn’t funny. It cut through the air like a million knives.” Even the ruthless Vicky has a sympathetic moment when her husband calls her work a “hobby.”
Vicky’s journey is perhaps the most satisfying facet of the book, as she learns to empathize instead of judge, to use her faith to spread love rather than fear, and to reconnect with her children and husband. After a lifetime of trying to fit into a mold, she gains humility and finally decides “to push back against the system instead of always trying to find [her] place inside it.” Anna, on the other hand, has little change over the course of the story, always striving for meaning in her life and doing what’s right. She has nothing personal at stake in her undercover work with Puremetics (even the money she invests is reimbursed by the OWLS), and simply joins up because the OWLS asked her to. Nevertheless, she is a likable character whose ebbs and flows of confidence and desire to do right by her teenage daughter are as relatable as they are endearing. Also, Anna’s daughter and Vicky’s son have a sweet friendship whose growth adds a heartwarming layer to the plot.
Suspense stems from the deadline of the Puremetics yearly convention, at which point Anna must achieve the fourth rank of the MLM pyramid—a near-impossible feat without recruiting at least a dozen similarly successful new distributors. She abhors the fake-nice façade she has to wear, and each time she (and Vicky) don it, tension is amplified. In a business that capitalizes on women’s insecurities, every money-grabbing move increases drama—especially when the wise Anna asks if it’s “possible to remove the cancer without destroying those who put all their hopes in a dream, unattainable as it may be.” The climax of the drama leads to an explosive faceoff at the Puremetics convention, providing a compelling finish to a story about the power of female friendship and the life-changing potential of empathy and self-confidence. In the end, SPLENDID LITTLE SCHEMES proves to be a successful feminist contemporary novel about women seizing opportunities to lift themselves (and each other) up.
An absorbing, suspenseful feminist novel, Robin Strong’s SPLENDID LITTLE SCHEMES boasts believable, relatable multi-level marketing business women who amp up the drama with their façades.
~Aimee Jodoin for IndieReader
