Review by Booklist Review
With entertaining clients a part of her job description, Harvard-educated Alex Vogel quickly learns that being a first-year associate at one of Manhattan's biggest law firms puts her college drinking days to shame. As Alex gets caught up in the competitive world of mergers and acquisitions, her normal routines, love life, and even her sense of self are sacrificed for the firm. Fans of books and films like The Devil Wears Prada, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Our Little Racket, will be entertained by the high-powered hijinks at Klasko & Fitch (especially, perhaps, if they don't work in BigLaw). Katz's name is a pseudonym; it's clear she's swum with the legal sharks for some time. Nodding to current events, Katz provides a convincing argument for the power of #MeToo while showing that many industries still have a long way to go, and ties her story up with a rather neat bow. With this fascinating look inside the skyscrapers and behind the board room doors, Katz puts BigLaw on trial.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The intriguing debut by Katz (a pseudonym) chronicles nine months of grueling work, politics, and harassment endured by Alex Vogel, an ambitious female associate at a top Manhattan law firm. Always up for a challenge, Alex is drawn to the department of mergers and acquisitions at Klasko & Fitch. Her game attitude and work ethic quickly earn her the respect of her male superiors. These include star lawyer Peter Dunn, whose client Gary Kaplan has a reputation for misogyny yet is the firm's largest source of revenue. Alex soon becomes enamored with the money, prestige, and power at M&A, much to her live-in boyfriend's chagrin. She begins an affair with Peter, and along the way becomes the subject of brutal gossip, develops a dependence on alcohol, and discovers the dark truth of what her colleagues will do to protect their financial interests. Interspersed with the main story are bits from a testimony given by Alex after the events of the book, as witness in a case brought against Kaplan by another woman. The author makes Alex a complicated protagonist, exploring how she navigates the hurdles of an abusive environment while trying to get ahead. Anyone who's curious about the world of high-powered law firms will enjoy Katz's engaging and brutal novel. Allison Hunter, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In Brontë's Mistress, award-winning Secret Victorianist blogger Austin reimagines the passions that spilled forth when Lydia Robinson, mistress of Thorp Green Hall, welcomed Branwell Brontë as her son's tutor in a household that included his sister Anne as governess (100,000-copy first printing). In Blooms's Every Bone a Prayer, ten-year-old Misty lives in an Appalachian holler, communing closely with nature, avoiding her quarreling parents, and aware she must get out and face the world. Cocreator of the Wine, Women and Words literary podcast, Giovinazzo reconstructs the life of Italian revolutionary Anita Garibaldi in The Woman in Red. In Katz's The Boys' Club, Harvard law grad Alex Vogel enthusiastically accepts an offer to join a prestigious Manhattan law firm and falls in line with the firm's competitive, materialist, sexist environment until events make her question everything (50,000-copy first printing). Multiple foreign rights and a Netflix series to come.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The perils and pleasures--if that's the right word--of a high-powered young woman working as a first-year associate at a major Manhattan law firm. One of the key sentences in this debut novel is in the author bio on the last page: "Erica Katz is the pseudonym for a graduate of Columbia Law School who began her career at a major Manhattan law firm." Another is in the acknowledgments: "To everyone who sees ugly parts of themselves in these characters and wonders if I'm writing about them, I'm not. (But I am…)." Clearly the story of Alexandra Vogel's life at Klasko & Fitch is grounded in experience and first-hand observation. It's an intense, disturbing #MeToo story that takes the significant risk of making its main character neither innocent nor completely likable. The book opens with an excerpt from a transcript of a New York Supreme Court trial. The defendant is Gary Kaplan, whom we will come to know as the firm's most important, powerful, and wealthy client. What the charge is, or exactly why Alex is called to testify in such detail about her experiences at the firm, will not be clear until very late in the book. Before that, we go with Alex on the wild ride that is an associate's first year as she tries to impress the bigwigs in order to "match" with a desirable department. Towering above them all is Mergers and Acquisitions--the best, brightest, toughest, most important--so naturally Alex, a mega-achiever whose accomplishments include a world record in girls junior swimming, sets her sights on it. Almost immediately the furiously competitive situation changes her into something of a monster. Multiday work sessions alternate with exorbitant dining, drinking, and drugging, taking quite a toll on her relationships with her boyfriend and her parents. Meanwhile sexual tension is building between her and more powerful colleagues while her relationships with the few women in the firm are…poor. She doesn't see the situation for what it is until late in the book, when nuance goes out the window; her awakening is rushed and less realistic than what's gone before. A knowing, nuanced #MeToo story from the world of corporate law, with juicy The Wolf of Wall Street--type action. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
