I love being given the opportunity to update our school library which is a unique space for both senior students and staff to access high quality literature. This is definitely a must-buy. It kept me absolutely gripped from cover to cover and is exactly the kind of read that just flies off the shelves. It has exactly the right combination of credible characters and a compelling plot thatI just could not put down. This is a great read that I couldn't stop thinking about and it made for a hugely satisfying read. I'm definitely going to order a copy and think it will immediately become a popular addition to our fiction shelves. 10/10 would absolutely recommend.

Found it a very difficult book to get into. Tried a few times. But sadly I just couldn’t get it. This book sadly was not for me. The humour just wasn’t for me I actually found it it strange and depressing

Thank you to the publisher for my earc of this book!
I love the premise of this book and enjoyed reading it too. There were times I was pulled out of the story a little and I’m not sure if it was the pacing or my attention. Looking forward to the adaptation!

This was a such a brilliant, unique read. I loved the depth, the characters, the emotional vulnerability behind this book.

I wanted to love it, I really did. The synopsis sounded like it would be just up my street but I just didn't get it at all.

I don't see any value in just picking apart what I didn't like about it so I have not written a full review. Review not posted anywhere else.

In Gold Diggers Neil grows up across the street from Anita in a tight knit community of immigrants living in suburban America. They are in each others lives but as they grow in to teenagers Neil is gets stuck in the average awkward also rans while Anita goes from strength to strength, straight A’s and in with the cool kids seemingly without effort leaving Neil behind. Kinda. They still live across the street. Neil then makes a discovery when he sneaks into Anita’s house and finds a strange, glowing pitcher of lemonade. Obviously he drinks it. Of course he does. And things take a turn.
This is a strange one. I felt this book was trying to be so many different things it stretched itself too thin. There’s the stuff about cultural identity, stuff about magic, romantic stuff, young people figuring it out stuff. It’s a mixed bag and therefore it felt unfocused. Neil is the main protagonist and really the only character we get to know. I never got a clear idea of who Anita was or what she wanted and I especially didn’t know her true feelings about Neil. I wasn’t even sure she even really liked him or was just using him. The magic was sloppy and wishywashy. But the main thrust of the book about what it is to be American and an immigrant was interesting.

It's a coming of age novel, a story of what is growing in a different country, culture clash and a pinch of magic.
An excellent debut, entertaining but thought provoking as well.
The author delivers an engrossing story and her characters are well thought and interesting.
It's a lot of fun but it's also a reflection on Indian culture and what means being Indian in the USA.
Can't wait to read another book by this author.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I struggled with this book - on the one hand I really enjoyed the story but on the other, for some reason, I just wasn't drawn to picking this book up and continuing on reading, I didn't have that need and urge to find out what happened next the way that I do with other stories.

The way this story was written, the topics that Sathian covers, how she easily flows from past to present, weaving in history and life lessons with the lives of the characters was great but I just didn't get invested in their story. What I did enjoy was what the need for gold was representing - our need for more, for wanting to be the best, for wanting what others have, always striving for that thing that feels just a little out of reach, which I think we can all relate to. I also enjoyed that she included the consequences of our actions, that what we take from others can impact them and us, that if you get what you want and desire, that doesn't always fix the 'problem'.

I am not an immigrant, but I relished the way that Sathian wrote about the characters that had emigrated from India, and their first-generation Indian-American children - the struggles that the faced in finding their place as both Indian and American, where they fit within their community, how they lived up to the expectations of their parents but of also being a child of immigrant parents and all that this entailed. This was probably the element of the book that I enjoyed most. The way the Sathian depicted these relationships, the struggle they faced as children and into adulthood, how this pressure and expectation that they felt impacted their mental health.

My only other issue with the books is that I found the chapters to be too long, but that is simply personal preference and an attention span that's been killed off by a global pandemic!

Aside from not necessarily being invested in the characters story relating to the gold and all that entailed, I did really enjoy this book.

Gold Diggers is an Indian-American magical realist coming of age story, spanning two continents, two coasts, and four epochs, in razor-sharp and deeply funny prose, Sathian captures what it is to grow up as a member of a family, of a diaspora and of the American meritocracy. A floundering second-generation teenager growing up in the Bush-era Atlanta suburbs, Neil Narayan is authentic, funny, and smart. He just doesn't share the same drive as everyone around him. His perfect older sister is headed to Duke. She overshadows him in every way making him feel like the black sheep of the family and distinctly average at everything he tries his hand at. His parents' expectations for him are just as high. He tries to want this version of success, but mostly, Neil just wants his neighbour across the cul-de-sac, Anita Dayal, to give him the time of day. When he discovers that Anita is the beneficiary of an ancient, alchemical potion made from stolen gold—a “lemonade” that harnesses the ambition of the gold’s original owner—Neil sees his chance to get ahead. But events spiral into a tragedy that rips their community apart. Years later in the Bay Area, Neil still bristles against his community’s expectations—and finds he might need one more hit of that lemonade, no matter the cost.

This is a captivating and richly atmospheric take on the American dream heavily inspired by the 1848 California Gold Rush and refers to Gold as a metaphor for the glittering hopes and burdens new immigrants put on their children’s shoulders. Gold as the thread weaving history, memory and imagination, a meditation on how the past blends into the present. Gold as the object of an improbable heist. There is so much in this book, but it is first and foremost an exceptionally good yarn, the story of two generations of American-Indian immigrants trying to become Americanised while clinging to a fetishised, culturally commodified India. There is love, drugs, alchemy and stories about the gold rush, both the forty-niners and the new gold diggers of the tech bubble. It’s fun and fast-paced, except when you stop short for a sentence so evocative you want to dwell on it. It is a seriously good book by a seriously talented writer and a brilliant debut woven with originality, magical realism, underlying humour and tragedy at its heart. Beguiling and intoxicating from the outset, it manages to explore success in both a contemporary and age-old manner and the pressure we now face to succeed on our path through life. A thought-provoking King Midas for the digital age. Highly recommended.