Title: The FuturesAuthor: Anna Pitoniak
Published by: Little Brown and Company on Jan. 17, 2017
Genres: General Fiction
Pages: 320
Format: eBook, ARC
Source: Little Brown and Company, NetGalley
Book Rating: 7.5/10
In this dazzling debut novel about love and betrayal and redemption, a young couple moves to New York City to prove their mettle and to find success—only to learn that such success may come with dangerous strings attached.
Julia and Evan falls in love as undergraduates at Yale. For Evan, a scholarship student from a Canadian logging town, Yale is a whole new world, and Julia—blonde, beautiful and rich—fits perfectly into the future he’s envisioned for himself. After graduation, and on the eve of the great financial meltdown of 2008, they move together to New York City, where Evan takes a job at a hedge fund. But Julia, who has only known a life of privilege, feels unmoored and increasingly shut out of Evan’s secretive world.
With the market crashing and banks failing, Evan becomes involved in an increasingly high-stakes deal at work—a deal that, despite the assurance of his Machiavellian boss, begins to feel more than slightly suspicious. Meanwhile, Julia reconnects with someone from her past who offers a glimpse of a different kind of life. As Evan and Julia spin apart into their separate orbits, they each find that they are capable of much more—good and bad—that they’d ever dreamed, and that betrayal is easier than they ever imagined.
Rich with suspense and insight, Pitoniak’s thrilling debut reveals the fragile yet enduring nature of our connections to one another and to ourselves. THE FUTURES is a glittering story of a couple coming of age and a tender, searing portrait of what it’s like to be young and full of hope in a city that often seems determined to break us down—but ultimately may be the very thing that saves us.
Review:
Compelling, insightful and satisfying!
This a coming-of-age story set in New York City during the financial crisis of 2008 and follows the lives of two Yale graduates who come from completely different backgrounds as they struggle to maintain their relationship and successfully achieve all their hopes, dreams and career goals.
For me what was clear throughout the novel was the ideology that life is not predictable; it always throws you a few curve balls.
The writing is well done. The characters are young, naive and self-indulgent. And the plot is a sequence of events steeped in deception, loneliness, denial, heartache, acceptance, and forgiveness that leads each character to undergo a form of introspection to recognize what’s truly important.
Overall this is a good debut novel that will definitely resonate with many people who have also found themselves daunted after post-secondary education.
This book is due to be published on January 17, 2017.
Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from the following links.
Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon Canada, Kobo, Barnes & Noble
Thank you to NetGalley, especially Lee Boudreaux Books, for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.
About Anna Pitoniak
Anna Pitoniak is an editor at Random House. She graduated from Yale in 2010, where she majored in English and was an editor at the Yale Daily News. She grew up in Whistler, British Columbia, and now lives in New York City.
