Of all the charlatans and grifters keen to cash out of Trumpworld with some tawdry tell-all of Donald Trump’s presidency, few figures had more potential for dropping a true bombshell than Stephanie Grisham. She was one of the only Trump consiglieres to survive the entirety of his 2016 campaign through Jan. 6. Hence, Grisham’s long-awaited memoir is instead a dud that spells a death knell for the literary genre.

Less intriguing than any scoops revealed by Grisham (Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump thought they were this decade’s Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld!) is the mystery underlying the book’s very raison d’etre — mainly, what exactly was she expecting?