**Spoiler Alert**
Erin Duffy is a former wall street player, procuring a job in finance right out of college working her way up to analyst. In her novel Bond Girl, Duffy takes us on a fictional tale (some say not so fictional) of a recent college graduate's first job out of college - Wall Street. Alex Garrett has dreamed of a job on Wall Street - money, fame, expensive dinners, parties every night, everything a person can dream of working in the financial world. That is if you are a man. Alex believes her career in the financial world will give her the money and freedom to do whatever she wants, go wherever she wants and be whoever she wants. What she doesn’t realize is the true nature of the boys club that is the financial world.
The minute she sets foot in the pit of Cromwell Pierce she is bombarded with male testosterone beyond anything she has ever known. Every stereotype of the male species is glorified in the first few chapters - secrets from the women, eyeing every piece of meat (aka women in short skirts and tight blouses) and making their opinion on them known, and trying to out drink each other like they are in a college fraternity. And most of these men are over the age of 35. Alex quickly realizes how she is being outcasted simply for being a woman by both her colleagues and upper management so instead of complaining like the typical woman, she uses her smarts and knowledge of what people want to hear and turns herself into a rare woman of Wall Street. Then things start to go bad. And it isn’t just because she is starting out on Wall Street in 2006, 2 years before the market crashed in 2008.
Erin Duffy weaves a chauvinistic world where boys will be boys and women are just toys. The reader might expect Alex to complain every time her male counterparts demean her, bring up harassment to her boss (even when it isn’t harassment) and get her colleagues in trouble. In Wall Street, all that does is make her look soft and no one wants to trade bonds and have their money handled by a person (man or woman) who is soft (hence the 20K bet for one of them to eat one of everything in the vending machine). Gross. Instead, she doesn’t let the things the guys say bother her because that is all - words and nothing more. No one makes a pass at her she doesn’t warrant (and if she does, she politely knocks them down) and she learns to let what they say roll off her shoulder.
While Alex tries hard to be a non-stereotypical woman at work, she becomes one in her personal life. And this person is someone she doesn’t recognize and can’t stand to look at in the mirror. In the summer of 2008 when the market was crashing things got crazy and more pressure, personal relationship pressure with one of her clients, was put on her. Basically, she either submits to this hedge fund man (who brought in 40 million easy) and spends nights with him or he makes her life miserable simply because she won’t be submissive. With upper management rooting against her simply because she is a woman, she takes her life back into her own hands and quits; not because she can’t handle the Wall Street world because she can but because she won’t break her morals to be successful. She is the only one who has to live with herself at the end of the day and all the money in the world cannot make her become a stereotypical woman of Wall Street.
Erin Duffy’s voice is fresh, open, and honest. She has a simple way of writing that makes your imagination run wild and feel like you are in the middle of the pit where all the action is happening. Alex is likable, familiar, and real (unlike some characters I have read in other books lately). I could not put this book down. As #28 of the year, I added her 2 other books to my to-read list and I cannot wait to dive back into another Erin Duffy world.
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