NEW RELEASE
Bond Girl - Erin Duffy (2012)
From the first day she tagged along with her father to his office on Wall Street, Alex knew she had found her calling. Everything about her father's job excited and interested her and she spent the next several years working towards a job on "the Street". Once out of college she lands her dream job on the sales desk of Cromwell Pierce and immediately gets thrown to the sharks. Dragging her folding chair from person to person, she watches and studies how things are done, enduring humiliation after humiliation from her gruff boss, Chick, who has no problem telling her what he expects of her (in front of everyone), to the desk of men who think nothing of calling her Girlie and sending her to get boxes upon boxes of pizzas for lunch. She's new, she's a woman and if she wants to make it in the industry, she needs to acquire a really thick skin. Just as Alex begins to hit her stride, the market starts to head south and she realises the hard way that the man she has been seeing is not the person she thought he was. Is this really the life she envisioned for herself all those years ago? Erin Duffy weaves an entertaining tale of life on Wall Street before the recent crash. Alex is highly likable and you want her to do well but you also want her to be smart. Reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada and Working Girl, Bond Girl is a hard one to put down and will have you rooting for the little people until the end. (LEK)
Erin Duffy has used her 10-plus years working on Wall Street as inspiration for her debut novel Bond Girl about the big-spending years preceding the financial collapse of 2008. The summary says: "When other little girls were dreaming about becoming doctors or lawyers, Alex Garrett set her sights on conquering the high-powered world of Wall Street. And while she's prepared to fight her way into an elitist boys' club, or duck the occasional errant football, she quickly realises she's in over her head when she is relegated to a kiddie-sized folding chair with her new moniker - Girlie - inscribed in whiteout across the back. No matter. She's determined she's got the stamina to make it in bond sales at Cromwell Pierce, one of The Street's most esteemed brokerage firms. Keeping her eyes on the prize, she'll endure whatever menial, degrading tasks come her way - trekking to the Bronx for $1000 wheels of Parmesan cheese, discovering a secretary's secret Friday night dance party in the conference room; fielding a constant barrage of 'friendly' practical jokes, learning the ropes from her unpredictable, slightly scary, loyalty demanding boss; even babysitting a colleague while he consumes the entire contents of a vending machine on a $28,000 bet. Ignoring her friends' pleas to quit, Alex excels (while learning how to roll with the punches and laugh at herself) and soon advances from lowly analyst to slightly-less-lowly associate. Suddenly, she's addressed by her real name and the impenetrable boys' club has transformed into 38 older brothers and one possible boyfriend. Then The Apocalypse hits. As her life on The Street falls into the depths of intolerable cruelty - both personally and professionally - Alex is forced to choose between sticking with Cromwell Pierce as it teeters on the brink of disaster and kicking off her Jimmy Choos to run for higher ground." You can read an excerpt at www.bookreporter.com.