Opening Belle

Now here is a book from a former Managing Director at a Wall St investment bank - where few women ever rise to that level, and where the few that do have to put up with incredible harassment and abuse from their male co-workers, and where it's mostly "every bitch for herself". SO I BELIEVE EVERY WORD. I LOVED this book! Isabelle, mother of three, with a slacker discontented husband "babysitting" at home, devotes all the time required by her company to succeed at work and to pull down seven figure bonuses - but she knows it isn't working. When a group of female co-workers decide to try and do something to change the poisonous culture, Isabelle's not quite on board - she doesn't want to be seen as a whiner and she needs that $$$ to keep show more rolling in. Plus she's just a bit sanctimonious about doing better than they are. Well, hang on, girl, because EVERYTHING'S about to change, and 2008 is coming up soon.

This is a very well written domestic and financial thriller. Don't miss it! show less

Opening Belle is a novel about a managing director at an investment bank, navigating the increasingly weird financial industry during the run-up to the global financial crisis in 2008.

It's very Great Gatsby, in that the characters are all awful and the tragedy is unsubtle. Belle is tenacious in holding on to her delusions of being able to navigate the financial industry (and her relationships) in a way that comports with her own morality, which makes the book feel very genuine but also very unpleasant. You want to shake her in the middle somewhere, which clearly all her friends in the Glass Ceiling Club want to do as well.

There is so little kindness, anywhere. That has to be part of the statement of the book, but I didn't like the show more resolution relying so heavily on the "mystical brown person who is kind to the protagonist and makes her realize that her husband kind of sucks." Kathryn takes perhaps the kindest (and most difficult) action in the entire novel near the end, and Belle... continues to value her professional contributions and recruits her into the next company? I didn't expect them to become besties but there is some really weird stuff going on with Kathryn and Belle is just like 'welp she works from home now I guess everything is fine.' How did a group of people (the Glass Ceiling Club) who were so vicious to each other end up funding a business together? That's a fable, not a novel. show less

I really wanted to like this book. So much so that I requested a review copy to review on my site. Unfortunately I was left feeling a bit disappointed and will ultimately have to mark this one as DNF at 50%



I had high hopes especially after hearing about the fact that Reese Witherspoon has expressed interest toward making it into a movie. Sure, the feminist, stick-it-to-the-man anthems might be a bit played out at this point but still a small part of me hoped that this one would be different enough to not fall into that category.



Unfortunately, the thing that really did it for me was just how hung up on money the main character was. I know, it's wall street and money is the name of the game but it got exhausting trying to decipher show more whether money was the issue or just an extreme level of pretentiousness. The story itself is about a woman who joins a group of other women who are hoping to shed light on the fact that men can't walk all over their female coworkers. And yet, if the main character wasn't sizing up everyone she met based on how much money they made, she was talking about how she ONLY made one million dollars this year as if that was such a terribly disappointing thing. I mean, she has children for god's sake!



For me, if a book doesn't make me WANT to read, I have to move on. This time I got halfway, but I just can't make myself continue. I can see where someone with tastes that differ from my own might enjoy this one, but I personally just found it too annoying and pretentious to be enjoyable.

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Author Maureen Sherry brings her real-life experience as a former Wall Street Managing Director to this fictional tale of Isabelle McElroy, an over-worked, under-appreciated, Wall Street Managing Director who is also the mom of three young children, and wife to a husband who has lost interest in working (or carrying his share of the load at home).

As with most books in the working-mom genre, Sherry delivers comical episodes of "overwhelmed mom trying to do too much," usually taking place at the kids' school in front the "Barbie" moms. Of course, unfairness at work abounds (Sherry's descriptions of Wall Street's sexist antics won't make any friends among those already distrustful of the group). What makes this book a bit unique among show more others of its type is a pretty good lay-person's description of the 2008 financial meltdown (useful for those who haven't read or seen "The Big Short," and even those that have) as well as a look at the way class plays a role among the American rich (self-made millionaires vs. those who have been groomed for the family way of life).

This book is an entertaining diversion for readers for looking for a highly-readable book to zoom through in a couple of days.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. show less

“Humiliation takes my relatively thick skin and morphs it into full-grain leather,”
― Maureen Sherry, Opening Belle

This book is not bad at all. And it was fun to read the adventures of a female Wall Street executive. Yet for some reason I could not get into this book as much as I thought I would.

I think that maybe more my issue then anything to do with the writing. I have found in the last few years that I have this issue when reading any book about Wall Street including the widely known "Wolf of Wall street" so it maybe just a subject that I do not find compelling enough. One thing that I will say is I admire the writer's courage. I cannot think of anywhere less appealing to work then on Wall Street and the book did nothing to show more change my mind on that score but it is interesting to read about this subject through the eyes of a female which I had not done. So even though it wasn't a book for me it may well be a book for someone more interested in the subject matter. show less

3.5 stars.

More meat here than in your average Sophie Kinsella novel, and mostly it kept me excited to keep reading. But it got a little soapbox-y at times, and I'm not sure it did a great job explaining the roles of traders and bankers in the subprime mortgage crisis, at least in a way that the lay reader would understand. I also wasn't always clear whether Belle was meant to be telling her story as she lived it, or whether she was recounting it some years down the road. Some textual clues pointed one way, some the other. One of those clues involved a big jump in time near the end that felt a little like the author wasn't sure how to write a particular climactic event, so she decided to skip it and show the aftermath instead.

I received show more a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. show less

Entertaining and nicely riling on the challenges of working mothers and women in the workplace. A bit exaggerated in the plot line and not the most well-written, but still thoroughly enjoyable.