Book Review: Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

I read Catch and Kill while I was working in Hollywood, right as the MeToo movement was beginning — which is to say I read it inside the industry it describes. It hit home. Not because of my own experiences, but because of the experiences of people I knew. That’s the thing about this book: for anyone adjacent to that world, it isn’t abstract.

The spoiler-free setup: Farrow’s account of reporting the Harvey Weinstein story — and of the machinery that mobilized to stop him. The title refers to the tabloid practice of buying a story to bury it, and the book widens from one predator to the entire apparatus of enablers, lawyers, spies (actual spies), and executives that kept the silence funded.

What I Loved About Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

I love good investigative journalism, and this is investigative journalism with the highest possible stakes: the story fighting back against its own reporter in real time. Farrow structures it with a thriller’s momentum — surveillance, killed segments, sources weighing their lives against the truth — but the discipline never slips into sensationalism. The bravery on the page belongs mostly to the women who went on the record, and the book never forgets that.

What I Didn’t Love About Catch and Kill

It’s a heavy, sometimes harrowing read, and with a few years’ distance it settles at four stars for me — essential once, but not a book I revisit. Know what you’re signing up for, and give yourself something gentle to read after.

Final Thoughts on Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

My final score: 4 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Do I recommend this book? 👍 Yes — journalism that mattered.

It pairs with my Bad Blood review as a study in how institutions protect their own fictions. Full shelf at book reviews.

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