Strong novel , using the financial crash as a metaphor for relationships, and the sense that as humans we have sold our souls for another element of success

The plot is good the characterisation is strong

I ended up really enjoying The Futures. For a while I wasn’t sure I was going to. I couldn’t get into it. I didn’t really like the characters and found them whiny and petulant. I’ve just graduated from Uni and I am a bright young thing and the world has not opened before me. Boo, hoo, welcome to the world. Nothing seemed to be happening, just two people drifting apart as they adjusted to life after Uni and formed their real identities. But then something happened and I started to warm to The Futures, Evan and Julia and their struggles. Life doesn’t always work out the way you want it to. I’m 36 and am unhappy aspects of my life. The turning moment for me came when Julia does something very naïve and stupid. The fallout is not what she intended but something she caused nevertheless. I started too really like The Futures after this. The Futures perfectly captures what it feels like to be caught between being a teenager and an adult when you’re a grown up but still need your Mum to give you a hug. I would recommend The Futures.

I really enjoyed this book. This story takes place mostly in 2008, with some flashbacks to earlier college years of Evan and Julia. They meet and fall in love at Yale, Evan, a somewhat naive hockey player from western Canada and Julia, a privileged Bostonian. As they graduate, they think they have it all figured out, even though cracks have started to become apparent in their relationship, they move in together in NYC. Evan gets a hot job at Spire, a hedge fund and Julia has some stumbles before finding a job as an assistant at a charitable foundation.

But the cracks grow wider as Evan starts working more and more hours on a questionable deal with his boss, Michael, and Julia struggles to find her identity and reconnects with a friend from college, Adam, now a financial journalist. As Adam and Julia start becoming too close, we see that his intentions aren't purely with having a relationship with Julia as the financial markets are collapsing and Evan's deal could be news.

This book brought back feelings of being freshly out of college and thinking you have it all figured out, only to find out you didn't have a clue what the real world was like. It was well written and I liked hearing it from both Evan's and Julia's perspective. At times, Evan seems a little too naive and Julia seems like a spoiled brat, but overall, their characters are fresh and likeable and more relatable than one would imagine.

I was provided an ARC copy of this book in exchange by Netgalley for a review.

A very apt title for a book concerning itself with Wall Street and the aspirational youngsters who work there. It also deals with their relationships and how a high octane work environment can destroy lives and morals. The author picked the global banking crisis for the main backdrop. I must confess it’s not normally my preferred genre of book but it was very entertaining reading. Evan and Julia’s story was a salutary one.