Bond Girl by Erin Duffy

Even girls working high pressure jobs like to read once in awhile. BOND GIRL provides a funny yet insightful look into the finance industry - and it's a book you shouldn't miss.

THE TOP TEN THINGS YOU PROBABLY DON'T KNOW ABOUT WORKING ON "THE STREET":
10. The number of U.S.-owned banks and/or brokerage houses actually located on Wall Street: zero.
9. Office windows that open are overrated.
8. Moran's Ale House & Grill, located in the heart of Manhattan's Financial District, caters primarily to Wall Street employees and people who want to marry them. It serves more beer between Memorial Day and Labor Day than any other bar in the city.
7. Free pizza cures all, especially before 10 A.M.
6. A $65 limo ride with road sodas is a perfectly acceptable way to travel 10 blocks...
5. ...or five blocks if it's raining.
4. Knowing math is important - but nowhere near as important as knowing wine, golf, and watches.
3. Gucci loafers go with every outfit, in all weather, all year round.
2. Socks are optional (and rarely necessary).

And the number on thing you probably don't know about working on the Street is...

1. A bet is a bet is a bet. If you lose at Credit Card Roulette, you will pay the bill. No one cares that you're only twenty-two and the bill is $1,000.

BOND GIRL by Erin Duffy
Published January 24, 2012 by William Morrow Books
304 Pages

---------------------------------------

I was lucky to receive an ARC of this book thanks to Book Reporter (http://bookreporter.com) and after my life settled down (if you didn't know, my grandfather was in the hospital and then stayed with my family for two weeks) I finally got a chance to pick it up. I read the book in 24 hours and put all other books and my job search aside. It was that good.

BOND GIRL follows Alex, a recent college graduate who has aspired to follow in her father's footsteps and work on a financial trading floor since she was a child. She joins Cromwell Pierce and immediately realizes her ideas of what it would be like are completely and 100% wrong. There is sexual harassment, no desk for her, bullying, tricks, high pressure scenarios...and a love interest that doesn't take as much interest in her as she thinks.

Alex as a narrator is fun and insightful, as well as fresh and interesting. I loved her story and wanted to know more after the book even ended. The characters were well fleshed out, including the secondary and tertiary ones, and the way this book was written has "make this a movie!" stamped all over it. The situations in this book seem all too real, even for someone like me who worked in Lower Manhattan (albeit not on Wall Street) and saw women like Alex daily rushing about in a world that still treats them as a joke.

The way Alex deals with the problems of her career are fresh, exciting, and driving. A client constantly hits on her, for example, but she is pressured into not saying anything thanks to her extremely large paycheck. But her increasing disenchantment with the field she's always admired makes the book compelling and harrowing, while Alex brings to the narration her ever-present humorous take on her life, her job, and the people around her.

If you don't have a business background, some of the concepts might confuse you (I took economics courses and don't have a clue what bond trading even is still), but putting that aside, BOND GIRL is an exceptional novel that I will recommend to anyone and everyone. And if you want to know more about the type of office where Alex works, trust me, it helps to look it up. I found THIS from UBS that pretty much sums it up. Trust me, it's kind of scary. Especially if you're like me and multiplying 6x15 is a cause for a calculator.

VERDICT: BOND GIRL is a hilarious book with some real impact about a world most of us will never know. It's funny, thrilling, and compelling. Trust me, you want to read this book. It's that good.

♥♥♥♥♥ - FIVE HEARTS

French Lessons by Ellen Sussman (REVIEW)

J'adore Paris! Get lost in Paris with FRENCH LESSONS, but don't expect to connect with the characters or their plights as they navigate the City of Lights.

French Lessons by Ellen Sussman

Published July 12, 2011 by Ballantine

256 Pages

A single day in Paris changes the lives of three Americans as they each set off to explore the city with a French tutor, learning about language, love, and loss as their lives intersect in surprising ways.

Josie, Riley, and Jeremy have come to the City of Light for different reasons: Josie, a young high school teacher, arrives in hopes of healing a broken heart. Riley, a spirited but lonely expat housewife, struggles to feel connected to her husband and her new country. And Jeremy, the reserved husband of a renowned actress, is accompanying his wife on a film shoot, yet he feels distant from her world.

As they meet with their tutors—Josie with Nico, a sensitive poet; Riley with Phillippe, a shameless flirt; and Jeremy with the consummately beautiful Chantal—each succumbs to unexpected passion and unpredictable adventures. Yet as they traverse Paris’s grand boulevards and intimate, winding streets, they uncover surprising secrets about one another—and come to understand long-buried truths about themselves.

I was lucky to receive an ARC of FRENCH LESSONS from a Goodreads contest, and being the sucker that I am for chick lit and France, I was eager to read it. I finally found myself picking it up and jumping in, and the first thing I noticed was the writing style – third person, present tense, and a distinct leaning towards the poetic and literary. The immediate problem – this style of writing immediately seems more forced than effortless. In my experience, this literary lilt is much harder to pull off than your normal, everyday prose, and I feel that Sussman didn’t pull it off like I hoped she would.

The story follows three French tutors and their American clients over the course of a day in Paris, further linked by the filming of a movie on the Pont des Arts in Paris. The story is told mostly in the form of three linked vignettes connected with two short before and after scenes amongst the tutors Nico, Chantal, and Philippe. Their clients are Americans Josie, Riley, and Jeremy, in Paris for various reasons, but all suffering from relationship issues, person problems, identity crises, etc. Having visited Paris in January (for 12 hours on a day trip from London) and having taken two years of French in high school, I wanted to love this book. Instead, I only kinda sorta liked it.

Why, you ask? I felt no connection with the characters. Any of them. They all seemed like two dimensional characters that I couldn’t see as real. I didn’t feel them or believe in them. And, being so short, the story didn’t really give us any closure for many of the characters, and happy endings were in short supply.

Sussman has a tendency to use French language to convey things to other characters, except one teensy weensy problem… The characters understand, but the reader who hasn’t had a French class since 2002? Ehm… I had Google translate open on my computer ready and waiting and I was still confused.

But something about this book kept me intrigued and I finished it relatively quickly considering I was reading other stuff at the same time. It was interesting, the imagery of Paris stunning and alluring, but I couldn’t connect with the characters and their stories. I was more invested in discovering more about the City of Lights than the people inhabiting it. I think Sussman might have missed the boat a little on this, but she still delivers an interesting, light summer read that mixes literary fiction with a beachy flair that makes this ideal for the pool.

VERDICT: With characters that aren’t easy to connect to but a fascinating story to set the scene, FRENCH LESSONS doesn’t quite achieve what it sets out to, but for a beach read, it’s fairly good.

♥♥♥ - THREE HEARTS

Skinny by Diana Spechler (REVIEW)

Want a quick read about the ups and downs of a young woman dealing with binge eating after her father's death and her adventures at fat camp? Then Skinny might be for you.

SKINNY by Diana Spechler
368 Pages
Published May 1st, 2011 by Harper Perennial

After her father’s death, twenty-six-year-old Gray Lachmann finds herself compulsively eating. Desperate to stop bingeing, she abandons her life in New York City for a job at a southern weight-loss camp. There, caught among the warring egos of her devious co-counselor, Sheena; the self-aggrandizing camp director, Lewis; his attractive assistant, Bennett; and a throng of combative teenage campers, she is confronted by a captivating mystery: her teenage half-sister, Eden, whom Gray never knew existed. Now, while unraveling her father’s lies, Gray must tackle her own self-deceptions and take control of her body and her life.

Visceral, poignant, and often wickedly funny, Skinny illuminates a young woman’s struggle to make sense of the link between hunger and emotion, and to make peace with her demons, her body, and herself.

When I entered a contest and agreed to participate in an author discussion, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into with SKINNY. I thought I would be getting a book about one woman’s acceptance of herself. I rarely read into details about things and this has often led me down weird paths with books. SKINNY was kind of a discussion about acceptance and body image, but more so about grief, blame, and realizations about one’s self and one’s life. Gray is a 26 year old (note: I think the math might have been wrong because unless she spent several months in the hospital, she would have been 27 during camp if her father died on her 26^th birthday fourteen months before she was in the hospital after 7 weeks of camp – small nitpick, but I could very well be wrong) New Yorker who has lost her dad and blames herself, diving straight into an eating binge before finding out she might have a half sister. She signs up to be a camp counselor at a fat camp in North Carolina (yay NC) in order to lose her fifteen extra pounds and to meet this sister she never knew she had.

The story is well paced and interesting, keeping me wrapped up in the storyline, especially the last 150 pages (read one morning when insomnia and a perky cat woke me up at 6 AM). For the most part, the characters intrigued me, especially Spider the allergic camper and Gray’s boyfriend back home Mikey, an up-and-coming comedian. The one character I really disliked, though, was Gray herself. Her whining was constant and by the end I really found myself wanting her to shut up. She blamed herself for things she had no responsibility over, cheated on her boyfriend who loved her, and ignored her own issues that prevented her from getting better. She wasn’t fat, she was just someone who needed to come to terms with herself. And a therapist wouldn’t have hurt.

I give this book props for the main male non-boyfriend love interest, Bennett. Not really because I found him too exciting, but because he was a Carolina Hurricanes fan. This really must be the first book I’ve ever read with a Hurricanes shout out. I used to live in the NC mountains so I enjoyed the setting and understood that well. Overall, the strength of this story lies less in the characters but more in the story. Even if I disliked most of the characters (especially Gray and her co-counselor Sheena, who I thought was exceedingly stupid and vindictive for little reason), I enjoyed the pace of the story and the flow. It kept me hooked, maybe because I wanted to see if the characters changed for the better. The ending, though, left a little to be desired. Gray found peace and moved on, but it wasn’t fulfilling like I had expected.

Despite the characterization faults, Spechler’s writing is engaging and fun. I was drawn in immediately, which was hard to do considering I started it at the beach with the ocean calling my name. I’m definitely interested in reading more from this author, just as long as Gray is not involved.

VERDICT: Besides annoying characters (including the MC), SKINNY is a fun, quick read for young women who have gone through grief and bouts of self esteem issues. It’s more of a 3.5 than a 4, but since I round up…

♥♥♥♥ - FOUR HEARTS

NOTE: This book was provided for free by Harper Perennial in exchange for participation in an author discussion hosted by The Next Best Book Blog on Goodreads in August.

Manhunting by Jennifer Crusie - REVIEW

objective: Find a Rich, Handsome and Successful Man

Kate Svenson may be a dynamite businesswoman—but after three failed engagements, she's decided she's hopeless at romance. What she needs is a Business Plan to help her find Mr. Right.

The Cabins resort is ripe with eligible bachelors, all rich and ambitious—just her type. But they're dropping like flies, and after fishing Kate's latest reject out of the swimming pool Jake Templeton is convinced that Kate is nothing but trouble. Especially for him.

A man who's sworn off ambition and a woman hanging from the top of the corporate ladder don't have much in common. But in that unpredictable territory known as the heart, anything can happen….

Published by Harlequin, December 2007
288 Pages

Read April 2010

Okay, cheesy goodness, but not an impressive book - even for chick lit

NOTE: This is a review from the Book Brats Archives since I've been slacking this week. Thought you might want to read SOMETHING.

I will try to make this as spoiler-free as possible for the enjoyment of everyone who wants to know my review without having read the book, but probably you already know what happens anyway by just reading the book jacket.

Kate is a 35 year old businesswoman/workaholic who wants a man, but not just any man. She wants the perfect husband after failed engagements and the fact she sets her bar too high to get anything besides failed relationships. So her friend suggests she goes to a...moreI will try to make this as spoiler-free as possible for the enjoyment of everyone who wants to know my review without having read the book, but probably you already know what happens anyway by just reading the book jacket.

Kate is a 35 year old businesswoman/workaholic who wants a man, but not just any man. She wants the perfect husband after failed engagements and the fact she sets her bar too high to get anything besides failed relationships. So her friend suggests she goes to a resort in the middle of nowhere Kentucky where she is sure to find the man of her dreams. Cue the entrance of Jake, a man who used to be rich and powerful in the world of business before he got tired of it and gave all his money to his brother Will to open the resort. Now he manages the landscaping crew for all intents and purposes. He's a simple man who isn't looking for a relationship, least of all marriage!

See where this is going? Yeah, so did I. But this is a romance book, so I will forgive that. What I won't forgive is how the author finally decides to hook them up. The first 200 pages were pretty good, four star material stuff, and then all of a sudden the characters have the sudden urge based on conversations at a bar with other people that they must have sex THEN RIGHT THEN OH MY GOD NOW NOW NOW. Then the rest of the book is filled with them hooking up, breaking up, crying, screaming, and getting back together. Don't worry, not a spoiler, I would hope if you were interested in a romance novel that you knew that was a given eventually.

Manhunting is your average romance novel by Jennifer Crusie. It wasn't as good as Welcome to Temptation which is my all time fave Crusie novel, but it wasn't as bad as some. As a 23 year old, I didn't really identify with Kate, but that didn't stop me from reading. I enjoyed the majority of the book, but it was as if Crusie got to page 200 and said to herself, "Great, now they need to hook up." It was just sudden with no real purpose. I also had trouble at times believing that Kate would ever do what she did.

All in all, I give this book three stars. It was cheesy goodness, and only the last few pages really threw me off.

VERDICT: If you want a good dose of Jennifer Crusie romance (which I suggest), skip this one and head for Welcome to Temptation - my favorite. Read this only if you're 40.

♥♥♥ - THREE HEARTS

Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner

Today we are reaching back into the archives for a classic Book Brats Snarky Review! Maybe I should make this a First of the Month tradition, eh? Note, this was written while I was in a MA program AND working on an internship with an hour commute each way dedicated to reports and researching Chinese foreign affairs. Not good times. Now I'm free! Well, kinda - I'm looking for jobs.

Good in Bed? More like implausible relationships, pregnancies, and life as we know it!

376 Pages
Published 2002 by Washington Square Press
Read April 2011

Being bogged down with work and with school, I have gone from reading six books a month to reading six books a year (other than academic journals and books related to the politics of East Asia). Good in Bed somehow managed to pique my interest, so I downloaded the kindle edition and started reading. I have to admit, for the first 2/3 of the book I found myself easily identifying with the main character Cannie, minus the boyfriend issues (I'm single) and family problems. She was likable, enjoy...moreBeing bogged down with work and with school, I have gone from reading six books a month to reading six books a year (other than academic journals and books related to the politics of East Asia). Good in Bed somehow managed to pique my interest, so I downloaded the kindle edition and started reading. I have to admit, for the first 2/3 of the book I found myself easily identifying with the main character Cannie, minus the boyfriend issues (I'm single, ready to mingle, but I don't see any men knocking down my door) and family problems. She was likable, enjoyable, and well written. The last 1/3 of the novel, though, was where things went off the deep end.

The book went from plausible to being one unlikely scenario to another, from meeting and becoming BFFs with the number one Hollywood celeb in a bathroom to her screenplay being sold to her ex's new girlfriend being the cause of her baby's premature birth (maybe). Cannie became unlikable and quite frankly annoying, but by the very end I saw the return of the Cannie from the beginning. But by that point she had the man of her dreams, the baby of her dreams, the life of her dreams, the friends of her dreams, etc etc etc of her dreams. For me, it was like losing the Cannie I cared about on page 50 and replacing her with some Cannie that had been turned into a sterilized Hollywood version of herself that had to be rescued by the handsome love interest who is rich and handsome and kind and smart (so on and so on) instead of saving herself like we had hoped.

This book is good mindnumbing fun when you are riding the train to work every day, suffering through writing a Masters thesis while trying yourself to write a novel. But is it a great novel? Absolutely not. Just a little fun. But yeah, I might be putting the sequel on my TBR pile right now as we speak...


♥♥♥/5

Verdict: Numbs your mind from reality very well, but otherwise is too unrealistic to be fun.