THE MONEY MAN

A high-finance dreamboat and a mousy bookkeeper become entangled in a white-collar mystery.

Alice Thurber is known for her thoroughness with numbers, finding comfort in their dependability after having grown up in financial uncertainty. But when she takes a chance on new bookkeeping software, the accounts of several of her clients start coming up short, so Alice takes advantage of a free service for small businesses from KRG Consulting Group. Derek Killion, a co-founder of KRG, is riding high after having secured a large international partnership, but his pet project is their new Small Business Initiative. When Alice comes to him with her problem, he assumes he'll find the solution in a matter of minutes. Instead, Derek is stumped, causing him to work a bit more closely with shy, self-conscious Alice. Soon, they're uncovering the origins of Alice's shady bookkeeping software, with its links to Russian programmers, which feels depressingly close to today's news cycle. Alice is living a Cinderella story: Ever since her parents underestimated her looks and her dreams when she was young, she's been full of self-doubt, which permeates every interaction she has with Derek, plus there are clear class differences between her and her Prince Charming. It quickly becomes pitiable to see Alice view herself in such an overwhelmingly negative light. The romance is fine but stilted due to oddly placed information dumps about people like computer pioneer Ada Lovelace and outdated pop-culture references to American Graffiti and The Music Man. The suspense elements are the most interesting part of the book, given their plausibility, but they feel more carefully thought-out than the characters' actual chemistry.

A middling romance that fails its suspenseful setup.