Get Buying In Scripted By Laura Hemphill Presented As Document

received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads,

I was hoping Buying In would read more like the movie Margin Call, as both took place on Wall Street during thefinancial crisis.
Whereas Margin Call was a tense thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat, Buying In was difficult to get into, and for a good portion, not very exciting.
So much of the jargon and all of the goings on dealing with mergers was a bit confusing for someone like me who is not familiar with the industry, or interested in the world of banking and finance.


The main character Sophie is trying to break into the male dominated field of Wall Street banking.
Shes expected to have no personal life, work almost round the clock, and always be at her supervisors beck and call.
She rarely sees her boyfriend, best friend or father, and routinely cancels every plan she makes with them because something always comes up at work, and work always comes first.
I found Sophie shallow and annoying and was constantly siding with those closest to her who could never understand why she couldnt even take a few hours off to share Thanksgiving with them.
Her snooping in everyones office and through their desks drawers when she was alone at work at night was never explained.
What was that all about Does she need some mental health counseling Did she forget to take her meds It probably should have been taken out as it didnt make much sense.


Im giving the bookas the author certainly knows the field of which she writes, Although this book wasnt for me it was fairly well written, Hopefully her next book will have a more exciting story line,
Buying In rides the edge of being contemporary womens fiction and falling into the recently coined category, “New Adult,” largely because the main Point of View character, Sophie is a recent college graduate on her first real job, struggling to swim in a highstakes, high stress environment.


While Ive never worked in the same part of the financial industry Sophie has, I spent more than half my life in the real estate finance industry as a loan officer, loan processor, and underwriter, for local brokers and for corporate bankers, so Ive had a taste of what was happening inthe period this book covers during the great financial collapse.


My own experience made me more likely to empathize with Sophie, but while I enjoyed the novel as a whole, there were times when I found Sophie a little unlikeable.
I wanted to accost her in the bathroom and shake some sense into her, and suggest she grow a spine.
I also found myself tempted to skip ahead to the other characters POV chapters, especially those of Vishu, her Delhiborn colleague, and Ethan, her boss, although once Sophie hit it off with client “Hutch,” and her trajectory began an upwards trend, I became more interested in her story.
Vishus story, specifically, is really touching,

A lot of this novel gets bogged down by financial details that could cause the average readers eyes to glaze a bit, and some of the characters in the nonwork areas of Sophies life feel a bit onedimensional SPOILER ALERT: she breaks up with her boyfriend, and because we barely know him, we dont feel the impact we should but overall, Buying In is readable, and I think the author has done really well with her first novel.


Unlike Sophie, I had almost twenty years of industry experience when I saw the credit crisis coming, and I was smart enough to bail out when I had the chance.
Sophies choices may not always have been ones I agree with, but they did make for interesting conflict, both within herself and with others, and by the novels somewhat abrupt ending, I had the sense that she would, ultimately, figure out who she was, and get what she wanted.
I was a bit disappointed with this book overall I much preferred Bond Girl by Erin Duffy which was about her own career on Wall Street.
The plot dragged for quite a while, and I think the descriptions/explanations about the AlumiCorp/RollRite merger went into too much detail.
I tended to skim through those parts, largely because I know very little about banking/finance, By the end, I really didn't care about the deal OR about Sophie,

Random observations:

, Sophie's relationship with her boyfriend Will was very similar to Andrea's relationship with Alex in The Devil Wears Prada.
Even the boyfriends are similar they're sensitive guys, they have few if any faults, and they both have jobs that "make a difference.
" Alex is a teacher and Will works at NPR, and in comparison, their girlfriends' careers may seem less meaningful and/or selfserving.
Both Sophie and Andrea are always talking about their jobs to those around them but care little for their boyfriends' career successes.


. I found Sophie to be a pretty unlikable character, She treats her family and friends in a callous and condescending way, enjoys snooping through her coworkers' desks, steals her mentor's expensive lipstick on a whim, and in general is extremely selfabsorbed.


. Sophie's initials are STL, the same as Sterling's ticker symbol on the stock exchange, Really This just felt like too much, This is explicitly pointed out by the author, so it's not even subtle,

. When Sophie's mentor Nancy takes her for a manicure so they can multitask and continue their conversation, the woman doing Sophie's nails asks "Square or round" Sophie is a smart woman but apparently she can't determine the meaning from context She "couldn't imagine what the woman meant, but she didn't want to seem unsophisticated in front of Nancy, so she said, 'Round, please.
'"

. As a kid, Sophie had an Einstein poster on her bedroom wall because at the time "she'd thought that looking at images of smart people would make her smarter.
" I suppose this may be something taken directly from the author's experience, but it doesn't ring true and seems pretty silly.


. At one point, Hutchison "downed his donut in two bites, " Is that even possible Now I want a doughnut,

. Enough with

the references to Will "scratching her scalp"!

, Also: Enough with the repeated references to Blood Diamond lipstick! And Sophie seems to wear it all the time, but she still has some left after four months in Stockton.


. I couldn't stop picturing Ethan as Lumbergh from Office Space, even though I'm sure that's not what the author had in mind.


. I'm still deciding whether or not I liked the perspective continually switching among the characters, . . We heard from a lot of characters but I kind of wondered what Sophie's dad was doing and what his life was like.
Oh the librarians at the Westfield Athenaeum, my city's public library, are such skillful visual merchandisers! My Goodreads ToRead shelf contains aroundtitles and at my current read rate of about one book per week, I already have approximately.
years worth of books to read, Nonetheless, on impulse I picked up Buying In, perfectly displayed at eye level on the top of the center aisle stack.




After a quick scan of the inside jacket describing a young, newly minted, female Wall Street analyst working in the male dominated world of investment banking with hints of the looming financial crisis, I was hooked.
I am so happy I gave this book a try!

This was a great debut effort by Laura Hemphill probably closer to.
STARS than theSTARS I landed on, I've been fascinated with Wall Street since I was a high school kid and this book felt so alive and personal with unique and conflicted personalities, moral and ethical dilemmas, ego and ambition, backstabbing and competition, greed and loyalty, family and career, all playing out before a backdrop of unending fear of layoffs or firings as the great financial crisis closes in on Wall Street.


I immediately connected withyear old Sophie Landgraf and was her most adamant cheerleader to the very end of the story.
A recent Yale graduate recruited by the investment bank Sterling amp Sons, it's early Octoberand Sophie Landgraf is one of the newest analysts working in the high pressure, results orientated male driven world of Wall Street investment banking.
Everyone on Wall Street senses the financial collapse is near but the unrelenting drive for investment banking fees and profits continues right up until Sterling's demise six months later.


Sophie is a merger analyst with the Industrial Group at Sterling amp Sons, headed by the cold, calculating, arrogant and completely selfabsorbed Ethan Pearce.
Pearces prize client is AlumiCorp, led by Jake Hutchinson, ayear employee who has worked up from the ranks to become CEO.
Despite an imploding economy and an extremely challenging industrial metals market, Pearce convinces Hutchinson to agree to a merger with RollRite, another Midwest aluminum producer, under the pretense of building a larger and stronger company that will allow cover for massive layoffs and extraction of operating efficiencies.
The merger will also generate millions of dollars in banking fees for Sterling and further Pierces career, Sophie works endlessly, even on Thanksgiving Day, to build complex financial models to justify the merger, In the end, overlooking her own sense of ethics and scruples, her desire to further her own career and under intense pressure from Pearce, she agrees to include aM entry into the model to make the numbers work.
The entry is dubious but the model forecasts very positive financial returns for AlumiCorp after the merger,

By the spring of, Hutchinson has been ousted as CEO of AlumiCorp and lands in South America heading up Brasilia Alumia, Sterling amp Sons has collapsed and is absorbed by Goldman Sachs, Pearce has landed at Lehman as head of their Industrial Metals Group planning his exit before word hits the street that Sterling is insolvent and Sophie is back home with her dad in Stockton, MA in the Berkshires.
Four months later, she is back on Wall Street, leveraging the greed and ego of Ethan Pearce and the promise of investment banking fees from Brasilia Alumia to join Lehman.
Sophia has become one of them!

Sophia Landgraf is complex and conflicted, so very young but mature and immature at the same time.
She is very unsure of herself when surety and confidence are the drivers of success on Wall Street and quickly learns to never, ever show her fear or weakness even in the face of severe adversity.


My rating of this book fluctuated like the most volatile security traded on Wall Street,



On the open the book felt a bit stiff, flat and forced, but after finishing three quarters of the story I had it pegged as a.
By the close I landed closer to a three, With justtomore pages Hemphill could have included a much deeper exploration of each character which I so desperately craved I was left wanting more!

I wanted to know so much more about Sophie and her life in rural western MA her relationship with her father Chuck Landgraf after his wife was killed in a single car crash that sent him into a deep dark depression her relationship with Kim, her best friend from high school who still lived in Stockton and was the mother of Sophie's godson Bryce her relationship with Will, her boyfriend since her freshman year at Yale who she breaks up with because Sterling amp Sons has demanded every minute of her time and energy.
. . her soul!

I wanted to know so much more about Ethan Pearce and his wife Camille's suicide and how it influenced and shaped his almost reptilian drive for fame, success and financial gain on Wall Street.
I wanted to know so much more about Vasu Mehta, a vice president at Sterling, who sacrificed so much for his career at Sterling only to lose it all in the end and return to India a much more humble and happier man.


Despite the absence of a more profound emotional understanding of the characters I highly recommend this book.
If nothing else it is an excellent inside view of the greed, mistrust and deceit inside the narcissistic, cut throat world of Wall Street investment banking.
After all, author Laura Hemphill was an investment banker at Lehman, Credit Suisse and Dune Capital she has the inside scoop!
.