Workhorse

by Caroline Palmer, Helen Laser (Narrator)

A richly drawn, unsettling, and wickedly funny story of envy and ambition set against the glamor and privilege of media and high society in New York City at its height.

At the turn of the millennium, editorial assistant Clodagh “Clo” Harmon wants nothing more than to rise through the ranks at the world’s most prestigious fashion magazine. There’s just one problem: She doesn’t have the right pedigree. Instead, Clo is a “workhorse” surrounded by beautiful, wealthy, impossibly well-connected “show horses” who get ahead without effort, including her beguiling cubicle-mate, Davis Lawrence, the daughter of a beloved but fading Broadway actress. Harry Wood, Davis’s boarding school classmate and a reporter with visions of his own media empire, might be Clo’s ally in gaming the system—or he might be the only thing standing between Clo and her rightful place at the top.

In a career punctuated by moments of high absurdity, sudden windfalls, and devastating reversals of fortune, Clo wades across boundaries, taking ever greater and more dangerous risks to become the important person she wants to be within the confines of a world where female ambition remains cloaked. But who really is Clo underneath all the borrowed designer clothes and studied manners—and who are we if we share her desires?

Hilariously observant and insightful, Workhorse is a brilliant page-turner about what it means to be in thrall to wealth, beauty, and influence, and the outrageous sacrifices women must make for the sake of success.

9 hrs. 45 mins.

Genres: Fiction, Audiobook, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Fashion, New York

10 pages, Audiobook

First published October 14, 2025

Reviews

[MagretFume · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe how fascinating this story was. 

I listened to the audiobook version and the narrator was absolutely perfect. She gave so much life and depth to the main character that I think it really impacted how much I rooted for her. 

Yes, the main character is a horrible person who does horrible things. But the writing is so good that was very easy for me to understand her. 

The book starts off like a funny tale of an almost average young women trying to make it at a Vogue-like magazine in the early 2000, but after a third of the story is starts getting darker and darker, while still remaining funny and also extremely candid at times. 

There are no good people here, and everyone is just trying to exploit everyone else. 

I did not think I would love it that much. 

Thank you so much Macmillan audio for this great ARC!

[emilybookedup · Rating 5 out of 5]

this. book. was. AWESOME!!!! how is this a debut? how is no one talking about it? WOW. 5 stars from me!!!

it’s my goal to put this on your radar 😎🥸

this was so good and unique, but felt like a combo of DEVIL WEARS PRADA, YELLOWFACE and THE GUEST. i'm so obsessed. it was like a train wreck i couldn't look away from and couldn't wait to keep reading.

read if you like:
- books set in early 2000
- NYC
- fashion / magazine era
- THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA movies
- good audiobooks
- main characters that are UNHINGED to the nth degree
- girls in their 20s being reckless
- a story that you have noooo idea how it’ll end

i went into this kind of blind and honestly recommend you do too, but this is my quick synopsis: a girl starts working for a fashion magazine and quickly realizes she's not like the elite (“showhorse”) that work there. and then she starts to do anything to fit in and survive... and her actions will SHOCK you 👀👀👀

Clo was a nightmare. Barbara was freaking hilarious but awful. Davis was your typical perfect NYC elite nepo baby. Harry was a wildcard. everyone played such an unreliable character and like messy raw person—they were all unlikeable but i was obsessed w them all!

i think some of the criticism this book is getting is valid w the length of it—its 500+ pages and did feel extremely long and that the author maybe had no idea how it was ending (because she did say in an article that figuring out the ending was the hardest thing for her which I did kind of feel). but honestly, the characters’ behavior and the plot were so freaking insane and captivating (and this girl kept getting messier and messier) that it turned out to work in the authors favor because as more unraveled, i was constantly wondering how on earth this book was going to end. all that to say… DONT PUT IT OFF BC ITS LONG LOL!

let’s just say, i’m glad the horse came back into the plot 👀 if you know you knowwww lol

!!! 🎧 also an EPIC audiobook thanks to the queen Helen Laser (my fave narrator ever) who brought it to life amazingly (especially Barbara lol!).

bravo!! can’t wait for more by this author!!!

[Jenna (semi-hiatus, out touching grass 🤌🌱…!) · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve ever read or watched The Devil Wears Prada and thought, “This would be so much better if ingenue protagonist Andy were a Tom Ripley-like sociopath!” - then this book is for you!

[Samantha Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don’t ask me why because I can’t explain it but I had a great time

[Stephanie Coughlan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to Libro.fm for the ALC! Unfortunately this book didn’t do it for me. I was excited at the beginning because it was giving off Devil Wears Prada vibes, but from there it quickly devolved into a longer than necessary plotless story about a bunch of unlikable people. Despite neither relating to nor empathizing with anyone, I kept going in an attempt to discover the point of the book and was left underwhelmed. That said, I listened rather than read and seem to be in the minority per usual so take my words with a grain of salt!

[Jeannine · Rating 2 out of 5]

The good: audiobook narrator was unique and well enunciated, lots of sardonic humor, throwback to the 90s and early 2000s is always fun

The bad: the main character is really whiny and also not a good person and I was not rooting for her or anyone in this story

The ugly: this book is 3 times longer than it should be. I honestly would have given it four stars if it was about half as long but holy smokes, LAND THE PLANE, my word. There was absolutely no reason for this to be 500+ pages. It began giving “I have to hit a certain word count” vibes the way it went on and on and on with absolutely no need to, and I completely lost interest. To the point where I got actively angry at it for just going on and on and on. Turned into a bad experience.

[Kristin Lee Williams · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not finish this book. I hated the whining point of view of the main character, I hated the side characters, I hated the entitlement. Not a book for me

[Kavya (wishes and tries to be more active) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

It took me quite a while to finish this story but I never found myself willing to give up. Something kept me at it. Maybe it was Clodagh's tenacity, her zeal to climb up the ladder, or maybe it was the way I related to her giving in to her insecurities and making quick judgements that don't necessarily lead to the best outcomes.

Clodagh "Clo" Harmon is not the easiest person to like. Perhaps, that's because sometimes we are her, and sometimes we understand this is where we draw the line. There is a limit to the vileness within us, which makes us feel good about ourselves (Like Clo judges other's decisions to feel better about her own). Too often, we base our self-worth relative to others, which can trap us in a vicious cycle of self-hatred for not being enough, leaving us working overtime to fit in.

All these realizations aside, if it hadn't blown out of proportion at the end, I would have liked it better. It would have been more rooted in reality than the extraordinary circumstances that take place at the end. Unfortunately, the ending ruined it for me.

Thank you Netgalley for providing this advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated!

[Emily Montagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, so bad. Zero plot, extremely unlikeable characters, 8 glaring typos (if this book had an editor, they should be fired, especially for not telling the author that this could’ve been 300 pages shorter). The author also must have used the word “furthermore” no less than 50 times. The only similarity to The Devil Wears Prada is the fact that the main character works at a magazine. I genuinely have no idea what the point of this book was meant to be.

[Emily Mayo · Rating 3 out of 5]

it’s a version of Emma Cline’s The Guest that’s more interesting in details and less interesting in practice

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 5 star review is definitely a case of right reader and I predict wildly differing opinions on this one. The first six chapters mirror my experience working and being young in NYC. Same bars, restaurants, same neighborhoods, very similar working experience, except my boss and coworkers were fantastic. Yes, there were plenty of Show Horses, and I was firmly in the Work Horse box, but thankfully I have a much better moral compass than our lead character Clo, and our paths diverge rapidly once the action starts in chapter 7.

The jacket copy describes Workhorse as Highsmith’s Ripley, but it lies much more closely to All About Eve. I LOVE how it brought me back to the 90s, when we were on the verge of tech and websites, and the changing world for those of us in physical media. I also loved to hate our main character, what a piece of work. This was not a case of wanting to see her succeed, but wanting to see if she could possibly succeed being a total dumpster person.

The book is not without its problems. It’s easily 300 pages too long. There are also an unreal amount of mistakes, I was embarrassed for the publisher. It felt like someone sent the uncorrected proofs to the printer instead of the corrected ones. There are lots of sentences with missing words, in and on are repeatedly switched and one chapter near the end starts with a sentence that then repeats itself, and tells us our MC is meeting coworkers at a bar, and then a sentence later she is at the bar alone in another universe where her meeting the coworkers never existed.

[Elizabeth Reilly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m almost certainly dumber for having read this

[Kristin Ley · Rating 1 out of 5]

A woman perseverating about being “doughy” and having rolls that won’t fit into nice dresses after she reveals her BMI to be 21 is disgusting to me. She says her height and weight. Why am I reading something like this? It’s 2025 and I’d like to think we’ve learned more than this by now. As women and as human beings. I was curious about who would write something like this. And seeing the author glamorizing cigarette smoking all over her chic instagram posts like it’s 1996 didn’t help me get on board. The story could have been told in 150 pages. Not that it deserves to be told. I felt like I took 5 steps backward mentally while reading this and got stuck in 1996 body dysmorphia nicotine hell. The devil wears Prada is a dated concept that just doesn’t work in 2025 and I’m shocked if not horrified at all the rave reviews this is getting.

[Sadie E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Workhorse is a bit like The Devil Wears Prada if you stripped out the charm, the upward arc, the glow up, the satisfying “she learns something” structure, and replaced it with something much more internal and corrosive.

I don’t even know if I liked this book, some of it was so close to home, but I absolutely inhaled it.

The first paragraphs had me weirdly tense. Not “thriller tense,” more like “this is hitting a nerve I'd prefer remain untouched” tense. I remember the days of, like Clo, ducking into some dreary alley to switch from trainers into 6 inch heels so I could cosplay competence. That whole performance of having your life together when really you’re just clueless. I abandoned that phase fairly quickly (Jordan 1 supremacy, always), but Clo lives it and breathes it. Suffocates in it.

The entire book feels like being trapped inside someone’s brain when they've got 1000 tabs open and the browser's frozen, but they won't let you close anything and fix the problem because everything's apparently essential.

Clo is that brain 🧠

This book's completely and utterly exhausting. Being in Clo's head's exhausting. There’s no off switch or moment of quiet. Just constant scanning, comparing, adjusting, panicking, recalibrating.

And it leaks out from the pages.

I became hyper aware of what I was wearing, how I was sitting, how my hair looked, what state my make up was in while reading this.

Answer: mini skirt and pizza print jumper (Clo and Davis would never!), balled up on the couch, total curly mess just shave it all off, none (Clo is screaming). It feels exactly like the kind of internal monologue this book's both exposing and feeding.

The writing's sharp, like it’s clocking details you didn’t consent to having analysed.

Clo's basically running a live audit of every woman in sight: “On the train to work, I search for any small sign or signal of other people’s failings…” And it spirals from there. Heels, posture, nails, brands, hair, tiny aesthetic “mistakes” turned into moral failings. It’s petty and brutal and also uncomfortably recognisable in the way your brain sometimes just… does that, uninvited?

But I also love how relatable it is. Maybe we’re not running full mental spreadsheets of everyone else’s moral and fashion failings 24/7, but most of us have those sneaky intrusive thoughts that just pop up uninvited (“omg that crop top? girl nooo”) and then you immediately have to check yourself like who said that?? 😯

The book just refuses to filter that voice. It lets it run wild, but it doesn’t stay as internal noise. It builds a whole system out of it.

The workplace is where it really locks in. It’s not just toxic, we are waaay past toxcic; it’s rule-based and ritualistic. It almost leans absurdist in how specific and suffocating it is. “You do not complain. You do not explain…" (and then an endless list of rules that basically amount to: erase yourself, but make it elegant✨️).

And underneath that, there's the expectations: “If they want you to cut your hair, you cut your hair…” No negotiation or boundaries, just compliance framed as ambition.

That’s the kind of energy this book's tapping into, that feeling of being trapped inside arbitrary rules that also carry massive consequences. And I think that’s why it lands. Because it’s not just about this one workplace, it’s about all the spaces where you learn to monitor yourself. Work. School. Family. That one person where you’re like “okay don’t say that, don’t sit like that, don’t react like that or they’ll go off.” That constant low-level recalibration of your behaviour to stay acceptable.

The workhorse vs show horse dynamic sits right in the middle of all this.

Workhorses grind but stay in the background. Show horses are visible and admired. Clo's convinced there’s a path from one to the other, that if she just works harder, studies harder, perfects herself enough, she’ll cross over.

The book keeps quietly (and then loudly) suggesting: maybe not. Maybe you are who you are and nothing will change that.

Because it’s not just about effort. It’s about class, confidence, social fluency, aesthetics, all those things that aren’t easily earned, just possessed. Or not.

The other characters are interesting because they barely feel like people sometimes. They feel like pressure points and benchmarks. Things Clo measures herself against. We don’t really get them outside of her perception, which makes everything feel slightly unstable. You’re constantly wondering: is this person actually that perfect, or is Clo building them into something untouchable?

That unreliability is part of what makes the book compelling, and also kind of disorienting.

And then there’s the pacing. Which is a choice.

It’s long. It’s very long. There are stretches where it feels like you're reading the same emotional state over and over again, just slightly reworded. Comparison > insecurity > self-correction > repeat. Sometimes it's frustrating, but also that’s the experience. That’s the loop; it’s not clean or progressive, it’s circular and sticky and hard to escape. So while it feels (and is) repetitive, it's also intentional.

Emotionally, the book's claustrophobic. There’s very little relief and no big catharsis where everyone learns a lesson and experiences growth.

By the end I was in this very specific state of: I respect this but I also need it to stop.
It’s messy and indulgent. It’s sharp and repetitive. It’s insightful and frustrating. It’s kind of brilliant and kind of unbearable at the same time.

[Krissy (books_and_biceps9155) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mix Devil Wears Prada in with The Talented Mr. Ripley, and you have Workhorse. This novel tells the tale of ambition, greed, toxic friendships and the ugly side of parental abuse.

I was extremely impressed with Palmer’s abilities and the fact that this is a debut. I was sucked right on into the story. The character development is rich, the atmosphere lush and her previous experience in magazine work really shined. I found the whole job fascinating and the competitive nature of everyone so juicy. The toxic jealously between Clo and Davis was so detailed and relatable. The idea of Showhorses and Workhorses was a concept I had never heard of until this novel. The intricacies of the bygone world were also a nice nostalgic touch (expense reports, vouchers etc.)

This was a buddy read with of few of my booksta favs and most of us agreed that the only downfall was the editing. There was no need for the novel to be 500+ pages. It took away from the overall story and breathless shock value I would have gotten from Clo’s actions. I am very curious to see what Palmer cooks up next.

[⋆｡°✩₊˚༚♡ ୨⎯Ridley Snickett⎯୧ ♡༚˚₊✩°｡⋆ · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was a workhorse to try to get through this book. Zero plot or any sort of character conflict in the first 100 pages. An incredibly unlikable main character. Boring and a slog to try to finish.

[Brandice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Workhorse was a cringey trainwreck that I couldn’t look away from and while the book is long — some (self-included), might say a bit too long — I enjoyed the reading experience.

This is a workplace novel set in the early 2000s about Clo Harmon, a young woman desperate to fit in. Clo is employed as an editorial assistant at a fashion magazine. She recognizes there are workhorses, like herself, striving for a place to fit in, and showhorses, like her coworker Davis Lawrence, who are already beautiful and wealthy. Clo is allured by how the other half lives and partakes in the social scene of NYC.

As Clo learns through her work and ingratiates herself into Davis’ life, she’s exposed to more of the high society life she desires. She’s ambitious and not always in an admirable way. Clo was far from likable, I actually found most of the characters unlikable yet I couldn’t stop reading!

Though it felt a bit longer than necessary, Workhorse was a compelling debut about privilege and ambition, and I stayed curious to see how things would play out.

[Caroline · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m sorry but this book was truly horrible. First of all, why did it need to be 550 pages?? Very little happened plot wise. And there were straight up mistakes/discrepancies throughout the book - saying she is 30 on one page and literally one page later saying she’s 31, saying the apartment is on 95th street when the entire story it had been on 92nd street, and very early on they wrote Penn when she meant Cornell. Strikes me as careless and in a book with so little going on, these kinds of things should be caught. Sorry for the rant but this book took far too much of my time to finish and I’m disappointed there wasn’t more to it given the raves some other people seem to have.

[Its Val Carolina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t mind the length, even though a lot of people bring it up in their reviews. The early-2000s fashion magazine setting was fun, and Clo was enough of a disaster that I wanted to see how far she would go. The problem is the payoff. After hundreds of pages of buildup, the ending felt rushed and underwhelming. And if you’re waiting for someone this awful to finally get what’s coming, you won’t find that here. The book is more about watching the trainwreck than delivering any satisfying consequences.

[Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a vibe, all the way through. The writing was page-turning, and for those two things alone, I want more from the author. However, there’s absolutely no reason that a book about a magazine employee needs to be 550 pages long. This could’ve been a 300 page book and been just as good. Regardless of that, j still thoroughly enjoyed reading this, and look forward to more from Palmer!

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did I finish this? Or did it finish me?

It's been comped to Devil Wears Prada meets The Talented Mr Ripley, and yeah, that fits really well. Just add like, maybe a splash of American Psycho to the list.

Every single person in this book is absolutely horrid (minus Isobel, and that might be because Clo puts her up on a pedestal and refuses to examine her flaws) and it makes for absolutely compelling writing. I was hooked. I was enthralled. I wanted to see exactly what Clo did next and how she rationalized (or didn't) her actions.

It was fascinating.

Were there 20,000 loose ends? Yes. Did it matter? No.

I kept falling back to Anna Bogutskaya's Unlikeable Female Characters.. Clo is an interesting mix of the trainwreck and the psycho (and a bit of the slut), a mish mash of GenX self-loathing, insecure ambition and a whole bunch of unreliability. You cannot believe a single thing she says. And yet she barely lets a peep through to the truth of what's going on (although with certain things, like Davis and Barbara, you can clearly see through to Clo's self-obfuscation), all while doing a deep-dive into the false glitz and glam of the post 9/11 fashion industry (there's some PTSD there) through to the Great Recession (the clues are sprinkled throughout, hidden by Clo's unwillingness to see and the reader's knowledge of history).

Anywho, I'll be thinking about this one for a while.

[♡Heather✩Brown♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

#ad much love for my finished copy @flatiron_books #partner

WORKHORSE

“Maybe these moments will seem small or meaningless one day, but from my current vantage point, I suspect it is precisely these odds and ends that add up to a life. So, yes, I want to go home, but I will stick this out. I will stay here in New York and wake up every morning with this searing, starving, relentless ball in my chest in the hope that one day it will dissipate, and that, one day, this strange and harsh and lonely land will feel a little bit more like a land that belongs to me,” (p. 67).

“We will not abandon each other, we say.
But deep down, I know there is no real safety in numbers. It's just us girls up against the world,” (p. 149).

“…but if she can be a bitch, I can be one,
too. And, trust me, I am better at it: I am on the fucking varsity team,” (p. 376).

“If you have ever gone properly crazy, you understand that it is difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint the exact moment you became an unreliable narrator to your own life,” (p. 487).

A love letter to our youth with our magazines. The book I never knew I needed in my life.

All a girl needs is a really good pair of heels 💁🏼‍♀️

There’s two types of people: Workhorses and Show Horses-

This book hooked me from the start and kept me hooked until the very last page! It never got boring - and for a 552 page book - THAT IS IMPRESSIVE! Devoured this book is 2 days.

I loved the fashion world plot, shady characters, and the writing is just brilliant. And while this isn’t a darker book nor a thriller, it totally reads like one. There’s this dark undertone that’s never really said but is felt throughout.

Just fabulous! Would make an excellent book club pick - lots to discuss here. There’s also a few laugh-out-loud moments that I just adored.

But … did I miss something? Who put Davis in the hospital?? Or is that up to us to determine?

Mem
Maine
$2-$5 per WORD 😱 I want that job!
Davis, Davis, Davis, Daaaaaaaa-vis 😂😂😂☠️ (audio was hilarious)!

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was in my very early twenties, commuting from Cambridge to London, working in publishing, and having various bad relationships, one of the comfort books I'd read over and over was Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada. My life had little in common with Andy's - my job couldn't have been more laid-back, or my co-workers less fashionable - but something about the totally foreign stresses of her days was intensely soothing. So, having pretty much memorised that novel, I was READY for Caroline Palmer's Workhorse. We're back in the New York of the early noughties, following another low-ranking editorial assistant who wants more. But while Andy settled for a lot of passive-aggressive complaining and painfully-acquired competence, Clodagh, our alcoholic narrator, is much more determined. She learns the ways of the magazine industry with unnerving focus, and although she can never quite shed a certain awkwardness, she's a ruthless social climber.

One of the things I most enjoyed about Workhorse is how Clodagh's narration slowly turns dark and unreliable. She tries to win our sympathy with a narrative about not coming from inherited wealth - being a 'Workhorse' rather than a 'Showhorse' - but it's increasingly difficult to buy it, especially as the supposed privilege of her rivals is peeled away. A number of pivotal incidents in the novel are observed by Clodagh with the appropriate emotions, but I found myself wondering whether she's more involved in making things go her way than she ever tells us. We also gradually sense the looming financial crisis out of the corner of her eye, because she never focuses outside herself for long enough to see what's coming. It's a shame, therefore, that Workhorse is easily twice as long as it needs to be, as this blunts the impact of what are some genuinely brilliant set-pieces (the art theft! the power cut! the babysitting debacle!). The book seems to settle down softly into its landing rather than slice towards it because each of these incidents is cushioned by so much filler. And while I can read about early-noughties fashion magazine drama forever (as I say, clocked up approx 1000 re-reads of The Devil Wears Prada), Workhorse really did feel weirdly bloated. I wish it'd had better editing, because it could have been savage. 3.5 stars.

I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the main character, "Clo," was sometimes funny and _occasionally_ sympathetic, I mostly found her whiny and annoying.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will admit the sharp looking cover first caught my attention, but the 500+ page count held me back. I chose to pick it up after seeing a lot of great reviews and was craving something lighter to read. This book has been compared to one of my favorite comfort movies “The Devil Wears Prada.” I would say that is somewhat true, but a darker version. Our main character, Clo is hard-working but makes some awful decisions throughout the story. But, I couldn’t help wanting her to succeed. If books with a New York setting, inside look at the magazine publishing world, and cringe worthy characters appeal to you, I think you would enjoy the story. Again, it is long, but there were parts that I could skim and still keep up with the story. The writing was just great.

[Lindsay Nixon · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF

thanks netgalley

[Dani · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect hot mess of a book! I LOVED this.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

unbelievable typos in this thing. like spellcheck-should've-caught-that level typos ("silhouettte", for one, and "saturdays's", and do NOT even get me started on the punctuation). great, propulsive story, but there were definitely several points where the writing felt VERY overworked. i also think some of the character work was not especially consistent; certain traits were emphasized/de-emphasized (especially in Clo and Harry) for what felt like the benefit of a dramatic ending to a chapter or section, or to facilitate certain plot points happening, rather than because of any kind of consistency in their characters. i did like the ending, though. overall a fun read if you can forgive a few flaws, which i mostly could

[Chrys · Rating 2 out of 5]

I ended up DNF’ing this one at 75%, and honestly, it felt longer than it needed to be. Clo was completely unhinged and incredibly unlikable and to be fair, most of the characters weren’t much better. What started with real promise, giving me early Devil Wears Prada and even Younger vibes, quickly veered into left field.

The plot lost its footing way too fast and settled into nonstop chaos with no real direction. By the time I tapped out, it felt plotless, repetitive, and just too messy to push through.

A strong start, but ultimately not for me.

[Lauren]

Because how the hell did she not get caught