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    Buying In
    Buying In
    Buying In
    Audiobook11 hours

    Buying In

    Written by Laura Hemphill

    Narrated by Angela Dawe

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Bright, ambitious Sophie Landgraf has landed a job as a Wall Street analyst. The small-town girl finally has her ticket to the American elite, but she doesn’t realize the toll it will take—on her boyfriend, on her family, and on her. It isn’t long before Sophie is floundering in this male-dominated world, and things are about to get worse.

    With the financial crisis looming, Sophie becomes embroiled in a multibillion-dollar merger that could make or break her career. The problem? Three men at the top of their game, each with very different reasons for advancing the merger. Now Sophie doesn’t know whom to trust—or how far she’ll go to get ahead.

    Set inside the high-stakes world of finance, Manhattan’s after-hours clubs, and factories in the Midwest and India, this is the high-powered, heartfelt story of a young woman finding her footing on Wall Street as it crumbles beneath her. Written by an industry veteran, Buying In tackles what it means to be a woman in a man’s world, and how to survive in big business without sacrificing who you are.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateFeb 18, 2014
    ISBN9781480585652
    Buying In
    Author

    Laura Hemphill

    After graduating from Yale, Laura Hemphill spent seven years on Wall Street, where she worked at Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse, and Dune Capital.

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    Reviews for Buying In

    3/5

    9 ratings3 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I've mulled this book over in my head for a few days and I've come to a conclusion. Buying In just wasn't a book for me. It's well-written. The characters are extremely realistic. Unfortunately it's that extreme realism that made it a tough read for me. Buying In almost seems to read more like non-fiction than fiction at times, and that's something I wasn't expecting.

      I can honestly say I did learn a lot while reading Sophie's story though. I'm sure we all have a basic idea of how tough it is to be a woman in a male-driven industry. We all understand that it takes a lot of sacrifice. Laura Hemphill creates a character who is living this first hand. Sophie has given up her social life, her love life, and even her family for this career. She constantly has to make difficult choices between the career she wants, and the life she already has. Sophie's life felt real to me, and I felt for her because of it.

      What was tough for me is how much of this book is actually industry based. There were quite a few times where I just felt like I was reading a handbook on finance. Discussions of projections, mergers, and plenty of other field related jargon made it so that I had a tough time getting through some portions of this book. I liked Sophie's story. I even felt for her coworkers. Still, I couldn't get past the fact that I had no interest in what they did for a living.

      I know that there's definitely a reading group that this book will target. Laura Hemphill knows the industry like the back of her hand, and it shows in her writing. Readers who enjoy learning about the high-stakes world of finance will be drawn in by the cutthroat nature of Sophie's world. As I said, this is a really well-written book. Sadly, it just wasn't my cup of tea.
    • 3/5
      Pretty good up until one really stupid and unlikely turn of events. If you believe investment bankers are selfish greedheads (I do)this will just affirm that belief. The main character goes over to the dark side for good (and bad) just like Eggers' "The Circle" and here comes Lehman Day! Bwaahaha!
    • 4/5
      Last year I read a dynamite book about a woman working at one of Wall Street's big banks, Erin Duffy's Bond Girl. I loved it, putting it on my Best Of The Year list. Recently I had the opportunity to read another debut novel in the same setting by a woman who also worked in the industry, like Duffy. My return to that world was rewarded with another terrific read, Laura Hemphill's Buying In.Sophie Landgraf grew up in a small town to parents who owned a sheep farm. They were hippies, and none too happy when their child decided to get a degree in finance and pursue a job with Sterling, one of the big New York City banks.One of the first things we see Sophie doing is going through the desk drawers of the people whom she works for, trying to understand something about them. I liked this quirk of Sophie, and it gave us a look at the secret side of these single-minded people. She goes through her boss Ethan's desk."One peek inside his top drawer had been enough for Sophie. Swimming goggles, nail clippers, a Ferragamo tie wound into a tight coil, and packets of Gulden's Spicy Brown Mustard. None of that compared to Ira Blumenstein's gold tooth, Kenneth Yang's Darth Vader lollipop, or Rich Angstrom's Magic 8 Ball."Sophie is a first year hire, so she does all of the grunt work: research and plugging numbers into Excel formulas, then analyzing the data. This world is so foreign to me, and I was fascinated by my immersion into it, thanks to Hemphill's skilled storytelling.Ethan's team consists of Vasu, an Indian man with a wife and two children he loves but rarely sees, and Sophie. They work in the Industrials division, and their big project is convincing their client AlumiCorp that they should merge with another aluminum manufacturer, whether or not it is in the best interest of their client. This would bring Sterling huge fees, along with a gig as a consultant to the newly formed company.If you had told me that I would find a novel about a big bank and the aluminum industry so intriguing, I would have said "I don't think so." And yet that is exactly what happened. As the merger goes through ups and downs, at times looking like it was all going to go down in flames, the tension builds and Hemphill has the reader on the edge of her seat, like a great spy thriller.The story is told through four different points of view- Sophie, Vasu, Ethan and the CEO of AlumiCorp. Sophie's story is more prevalent, but Vasu's is the one that is heartbreaking, and I would have liked to have heard more from him.There is one vignette that I also read in Duffy's Bond Girl. Two men compete to eat one of each of the items in the vending machine. Sophie was a referee for this contest (as was Duff's female protagonist), so I'm going to guess that this is something that goes on at all big banks. It epitomizes the testosterone driven mentality that exists. Vasu compares Sterling and all of the other banks who caused the subprime economic crisis to the Vending Machine Challenge guy, who "swallow(s) too much too fast, (then) throw(s) up."The novel takes place just prior to the Lehman collapse, and like many of the other banks, Sterling is in trouble for their reckless ways, affecting all of the major characters. We see that for all of their sacrifices- having no social life, missing holidays with family, working insane hours- their loyalty and hard work means nothing to a corporation.I bought into Buying In. I was swept into this crazy world of high finance along with Sophie, and taken on a fast-paced ride learning more about aluminum factories that I thought possible, and liking it. This is a smart novel, and one that will have you turning the pages to see how it all comes crashing down, and if Sophie is a survivor.