A very entertaining fictional journey through the Indian American experience in early 21st century America. A high-spirited narrative full of laugh aloud moments, tenderness, drama and an unforgettable cast of characters. Following Neil and Anita's adventures will allow the reader to discover the many faceted aspects of the Indian diaspora in the US today as they try to reconcile their "Americanness" and their Indian heritage. Lastly, It was very refreshing to read about an immigrant experience taking place in Atlanta and its vibrant urban sprawl. A nice geographical change for once. A marvellous novel to be enjoyed without moderation.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Press for the opportunity to read this wonderful novel prior to its release date

Special thanks to Penguin Group and NetGalley for the ARC of this book for my honest opinion.

Oh boy did I have to pay attention to this story. Where to begin? Maybe just pick it up and read it. It was a little slow-going for me but I was happy to get it.

Neil, has a perfect older sister going to Duke. His parents do want the same for him and it's pressure. But Neil only has eyes for Anita across the street, who her and her mother Anjali, have found a way to make a potion with gold, where whoever takes it gets the ambition and drive to be successful and live the American dream. Amelia mother you see was very ambitious, but used the gold for her son's and not Anjali, so when Anjali came to America, she took the gold with her. Neil, from across the street gets tangled up with them and somehow (not telling) becomes sucessful.

Years later, Neil and Anita meet up again by coincidence and he's teaching about the gold rush, coincidentally again. But Anita 's mom Anjalii is in trouble, so Anita and Neil have to come up with some thievery at high stakes to help her.

Slow in the beginning, this book picks up speed near the end. 3.5 stars rounded to 4.

Magical realism as a genre sometimes rubs me the wrong way, but this own voices title blows the usual stereotypes out of the water. I was struck by the quality of the writing and the rich fantasy. Totally unique and surprising. Highly recommend.

This story highlights the difficulty of being a second generation American, specifically the need to be very successful in order to make your parents sacrifice in moving to a new country a worthwhile venture. Neeraj "Neil" Narayan is struggling to do just that in high school and later as an adult. In feeling the pressure to succeed when he constantly feels less than and unable, Neil stumbles into a way to harvest the ambition of others to buoy his own success through his next door neighbor and crush, Anita, as well as her mother, Anjali. But after a tragic event Neil realizes the cost of this borrowed ambition is high, something that will plague him for years to come. I appreciated this story of the immigrant struggle to achieve the often unachievable and unrealistic American Dream - it's a sad commentary on how Americans define success - and enjoyed being transplanted into an Indian-American family. As an adult, Neil is using various drugs to attempt to make something of himself, an element I wasn't quite sure I found believable for a variety of reasons (an example: how is a grad student on a grant, without a job, able to regularly afford cocaine and other drugs?) and I can't say I felt particularly attached to any of the characters. One small detail bothered me for its lack of believability: early in the book, numerous scenes (some insignificant, some more important) happen in basements. However, this book takes place in Georgia, and based on my own knowledge of the South (friends and family who live in Georgia and North Carolina) and a little internet research, the majority of homes in the South do not have basements - they either have crawl spaces or are built on slabs. I thought at first maybe this was the author writing about an area she was not familiar with, but it turns out the author grew up in Georgia. I imagine many Southerners reading this book would find the fact that various scenes take place in a basement as unbelievable as I did, but this is a small thing. Ultimately, this is a decent story with some thought provoking moments from a debut author that shows promise.

Gold Diggers is an Indian-American story unlike any I've read before. It's quite a unique debut novel, focused on the desi diaspora in the US.

The narrator of the book is Neil Narayan (actual name: Neeraj), a young Indian-American teenager. His parents have high expectations from him and his older sister. Unfortunately, the drive that fuels his competitive sister's ambition is missing in Neil and he finds himself struggling to meet their expectations. His focus is more on his neighbour, Anita Dayal, who has a dark secret of her own. Along with her mother Anjali, she brews a special potion made with gold stolen from other desi achievers to harness their energies. After a certain tragedy causes them to part ways, the story resumes ten years later, where they need to return to their alchemical adventures once again, this time to save Anjali.

The book aims to be a bildungsroman-cum-heist-cum-literary fiction-magical realism. It performs wonderfully in the bildungsroman part, decently in the heist and magical realism sections but goes for a toss when it comes the literary fiction bit.

I did love the caricatured sarcasm in the book. It takes a not-so-subtle dig at all those Indian Americans who want the best of American opportunities while looking down on American values. They want their children to succeed at engineering or any such prominent field, they want their children to aim at the elite universities, they want their children to avoid alcohol and drugs and premarital sex and get married to their chosen Indian partner after "settling" in the career. All the parents portrayed in the novel except Anjali are stereotypical. Then again, these stereotypes are based very much in reality, though they seem like an exaggeration.

I also appreciate how the author didn't present a picture-perfect cultured Indian-in-America story. The younger generation is shown to have American struggles, American thinking, American attitudes, while still having the Indian guilt hammered in them courtesy their parents. Neil feels tremendous pressure from his parents to become "something", to justify their "shift across the oceans". It's a nice insight into the pressure that the younger generation (born in America to desi parents) feels regularly.

I wish the rest of the book could have matched up to these two positive points. I didn't like the narrative pov of Neil. He was boring and almost self-obsessed. I wish the narrator had been Anjali or Anita. The story would have had so much more to offer if it were from either of their perspectives. Even a multi-pov narration would have worked well. Neil the narrator simply couldn't handle the burden of telling their story effectively. The flashbacks that offer Anjali's story are way more interesting than the present seen through Neil's eyes.

The book starts off very well and until about 40-45%, I was quite hooked onto the story though it was slow-paced at times. After that mark, it just dragged. The plot meanders a lot and ends up becoming a tedious torture. It doesn't recover its momentum till the very end. I was on the verge of giving up on the book many times. The only reason I read it till the end was to know the whats and whys of Anjali's story. That ending did provide some closure, but not satisfaction. The book would have been much better with a strict editing, making the narrative tauter and cutting out all unnecessary chaff.

All in all, this was a book that had tremendous potential but failed to achieve the promised heights. It is still a great debut, especially in terms of its innovative storyline. All it needed is a more focused narrative, a better protagonist, and crisper editing.

Thank you, NetGalley and Penguin Press, for the Advanced Review Copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This book about Indian immigrant families set outside Atlanta in the mid-2000's started out very strong. I loved everything about the characters being in high school - even the magical realism stuff. The book took a turn when it is 10 years later and those same kids who were their families' hopes and dreams are now floundering. It's not that they were floundering that bothered me, it's the quest for literal gold and how that eventually went down that bothered me. So not a great ending but still an engaging book for adults that should also appeal to older high school students. (I received an advanced reader copy of this book through NetGalley.)

Thoroughly enjoyable, thoughtful, loved the weaving in of history as well as the social comedy/ satire bits, and has plenty of left field/ unexpected events and characterizations to lift it above "rom-com" into diasporic literary fiction.

When you REALLY want to love a book, but it just doesn’t happen... ⁣
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I was so excited to get a galley of GOLD DIGGERS earlier this week since it has some of my favorite things: second generation protagonists, family drama, and just a touch of magical realism. But it was soooo slow, and I struggled to invest in Neil as the narrator when there were so many more interesting women around him; one of the few times I wished a novel had been told from multiple perspectives. ⁣
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GOLD DIGGERS has already been optioned for TV, and I think it could play better on the screen for sure. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for an eARC in exchange for this review. ⁣

Gold Diggers is a fantastic read! What starts out as a scheme to get a little bit further ahead in life, turns into a larger story on the chase for success and how to access to it. Merging themes with the place gold has in Indian culture with the 1800's gold rush in the United States and then tying it to present day dreams certain segments of the Indian community has with educational attainment and tangible markers of success like job title, home, income, etc was fantastic. The story kept building into something much bigger than you'd initially anticipate. This is quite an ambitious story and I loved it.

Neil Narayan is growing up in an Atlanta suburb, attending Okefenokee High School, struggling to keep up with his immigrant parents' high expectations. His friends are a bunch of Indian-American kids and some Asians (Indians were not "South Asians" then.) He and his childhood friend Anita may be the only ones who are not completely involved in preparing for Harvard from grade 9. But Anita is changing. Suddenly she is trying out for Miss India Georgia, she's talking about the Ivies and has a kind of glow. Neil feels left out, and the only thing that keeps him from sinking into mediocrity is his terrifying debate partner Wendi Zhao, who attempts to kick him into competence in debate--his only extracurricular activity. Wendi plans on Harvard, and since Neil is her assigned debate partner he HAS to perform. A reconnection with Anita reveals her secret--her mother's gold-based alchemical concoction that allows the drinker to imbibe the traits of the gold's owner.

"Gold Diggers" will follow this group into young adulthood, ending with a convoluted heist to boost their prospects. The result is not what anyone expects.

This is a charming book, very readable, a coming-of-age story about first generation immigrants finding their way amidst impossibly high expectations. Throw in alchemy, and you are glued to the page.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for access to this fine title!

~~Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader

This book reminded me of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri but with a magical twist. This is a story about the immigrant experience, the cost of the "American dream", the complex ties between assimilation and generational conflict. Neil ia complex and vulnerable MC and narrator. I think I was immediately pulled into this story because of his believable voice and his struggle accepting himself and the pressures of a high achieving environment. I thought this accurately reflected the pressure that many students feel today. The added concept of "using" gold as a drug felt believable and not like fantasy at all. The lore of the gold digger weaved through out this book highlighted Sanjena Sathian as a masterful storyteller. I can't wait to see what she writes next.
Add this to your library shelves. Also recommended for older high school students.

What a debut!

This has everything I love in a novel: sharp, witty writing, a vulnerable narrator, a dash of magical realism, a depth of culture, an eccentric cast of characters, metaphors, and even a heist.

In this novel, we follow Neil, a second generation Indian, as he discovers that Anita, the girl next door, has a magical secret. From their teen years to adulthood in Silicon Valley, we follow Neil and Anita as they reckon with parental expectations, what it means to be Desi in America, and the different shapes ambition can take.

The pacing was a little off throughout the story, but I truly enjoyed the journey and thought the ending was thought-provoking and satisfying.

I am excited to read whatever Sathian writes next!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a digital arc of this book.

Gold Diggers was something new, something I've never read before. The story revolves around Neil, our main character who gets caught up in a whirlwind of magic realism with his neighbors, Anita and Anjali Auntie. The story was persistent on one thing. The Desi experience, and I felt like this story captured what it essentially meant to be Desi in America. The pressure of doing well in academics, the stress over college and the life that comes after, the truth that comes in with fiction.

Though the pacing of the book was quite slow, something I did not enjoy, the story was still compelling. Being Indian myself, there was some things I did not relate to, as known, since every experience is different. The obsession with drinking and drugs at such a young age with Desi teens didn't seem realistic, but the thing that was relatable was ambition. We see as the characters parents, similar to every immigrant's parents, come to this country for a better life for their kids. Though I could not relate to everything Neil and Anita did, I still found their struggles the same as mine.

In the end of this book, I think my favorite part was the ending. No spoilers, but the reasoning behind why Anita and Anjali did what they did, was thought provoking. We always hear to do good, and though our characters were not always doing the best, the ending I felt, showed why they did everything they did. It came off to me as going back to ones roots, in some form. Having those characters show up made me feel sad, in a way. Gold Diggers is a good tale, with elements that come to play into real life. This thought compelling and provoking is something that is sure to remind you of the better things in life.

I wavered between 3 and 4 stars for this book. Going with the latter as the book held a lot of promise but fell short on a few accounts.

For starters, the book is touted as a magical realism story. Far from it. This "magical realism" part of it sounded like a pure placebo effect to me. There was a perfectly good human emotions story here without the alchemy (or the historical reference) thread running though it.

Just like most debuts, the story falls in the trap of a lot to say and ends up cramming way too many ideas and side stories in one book. There were too many Indian names just littered around. The author doesn't quite manage to pull off the supposedly sarcastic depiction of the Indian community. Comes across as a bit too forced. At times, the dialogue format changes from prose to that of a play. Lots of overlapping conversations happen taking away from the main one.

Having said all that, this is a big achievement for a debut work. The author holds promise specially if the editorial work can tighten the story in future works.