A more intricate Devil Wears Prada for the tech generation.
A bunch of emotionally and morally stunted millennials run into trouble when they try to take a questionable dating app public.
Full of insider details and industry jargon from Silicon Valley and Wall Street, Miller’s debut novel is a seductive romp through the complicated $14 billion IPO of a startup called Hook, a dating app in which users give each other ratings and are evaluated according to a “cumulative Hook score.” The app has more than 500 million users, and ambitious CFO Nick Winthrop thinks a public offering could put him “on the precipice of becoming one of the world’s great leaders,” but first he has to convince CEO Josh Hart, a computer science nerd who hates Wall Street. Josh agrees but asks Nick’s Stanford nemesis, Todd Kent, an associate at the investment bank L. Cecil, to oversee the deal. Todd assembles a team at L. Cecil that includes Tara Taylor, an old crush from Stanford and one of the youngest vice presidents in Equity Capital Markets, frumpy analyst Neha Patel, and the lazy but well-connected Beau Buckley. The plot takes a surprising and absorbing turn when Stanford senior, Hook user, and former L. Cecil intern Kelly Jacobson dies of a drug overdose under mysterious circumstances. As Hook programmer Juan Ramirez discovers incriminating user data from the night she died, the team may have to make some tough moral choices. Told from many different points of view, the book is somewhat overpopulated with major characters. While some of the scenes and characters feel clichéd, others are intelligently observed, with fresh, well-paced dialogue in which characters deliver lines like, “There’s a difference between unemotional sex that’s respectful and transactional sex that’s orchestrated by an app.” The central mystery and the fun of watching the deal unravel drive the narrative forward, allowing just the right number of characters to develop a conscience.
A more intricate Devil Wears Prada for the tech generation.Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-17485-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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