book: bad blood by john carreyrou

I finished Bad Blood recently :)

It is a must-read if you want to understand what happened with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. It is very specific and focused in that regard - it isn't a general observation about Silicon Valley or Palo Alto startups with her as an example (which parts of the cover may suggest), but instead a detailed recount and look behind the scenes by the journalist who broke the initial story.

It feels like a written documentary as much as it feels like a piece of evidence, a permanent record of everything, especially Carreyrou's diligent work. It has exactly the tone of something you'd write after dedicating almost your entire life to that case for about 3 years and then writing everything down in case it ever becomes relevant again, in case people forget once she gets out, or in case anyone would ever decide to come for you. An insurance one can always point to about the exact work, timeline and details.

This extreme involvement and expertise really helps flesh out the case and explains a lot of the background workings without relying on potentially more unreliable secondhand sources, but it also made it hard for me to keep all the less important characters apart, especially in the beginning. There's a flurry of characters being set up in the beginning that are not really relevant for much longer and they aren't given the space and details to become fleshed out people you can actually remember and differentiate between.

Pages full of sentences filled to the brim with random names and their connections and investments that may almost never be mentioned again for the rest of the book. Later on, their last or first name may come up again, but because they were just introduced briefly 50+ pages prior and their only characteristic was investing this amount or coming from that company, you don't even know who that was anymore; same with the first few employees, I'd say.

I understand they are needed for the evidence and bigger picture, but it made getting into the book a bit difficult because you are bombarded with names without anything substantial to tie them to or having an idea how relevant they'll be to the case. It's absolutely understandable that this "blindness" to how much introduction and explanation a person involved in the scandal needs for the average layperson exists when you've been so deep into the story for years that it just seems obvious to you.

It isn't always like this: Sometimes, out of nowhere, at what felt like the wrong time for me, the reader suddenly got a glimpse of someone's personality for no apparent reason. It'd be some tense negotiation or argument and we'd suddenly be treated to something akin to "[Name], who likes his tea black, said he had never heard of this machine before." (not a quote, but a close example, because I currently cannot find the examples I was thinking of). Why am I suddenly out of nowhere being told this, when it has not been relevant in this situation?

At other times, especially much later in the book, the vivid details really spill out of Carreyrou. It almost turns into a fiction novel the way the scenery, clothes and demeanours are described, which can definitely be enjoyable and break up the matter-of-fact tone of this non-fiction, but also felt a little much in some occasions; so much so that, if I hadn't known this was all real and neither non-fiction nor fiction based on real events, I'd have wondered if this is where things stray into fiction, as this level of detail is usually reserved for that.

As the book goes on, the pacing becomes faster and faster. The closer we get to the core of it, the house of cards falling apart, the more things happen at once, new twists and turns emerge, and the more erratic and threatening the behavior of people involved becomes.

The ending is rather anti-climactic. Suddenly, it all stops. We have read this insanity, and then there is no resolution, no closure, no punishment. It is in the hands of the court now and we'll have to see what happens.

Nowadays, of course we know what happened, but I am a little sad the book had to stop where it did, as it was released in 2018. At least there's a podcast for the book by Carreyrou that also covers the trial, but I still wish there could have been an update to the book (aside from the 2020 Afterword, when the sentencing was in 2023), though I imagine the author also wants to reclaim his life and not keep having to go back to this, or at least get to take a longer break away from it.

I hope maybe he'll keep his eyes peeled on what's happening with Haemanthus in the future :)

Published 27 Sep, 2026