Mentioned in my Jan Wrap up

I can not say this is a great book. However, I really enjoyed it. Pitoniak did an excellent job of depicting the insecurities of recent graduates going out into the "real world". However, I have very mixed feelings with the ending.

The Futures by Anna Pitoniak is the story of Evan and Julia as they tackle “real” life in New York after graduating from Yale University. Set in the 2008 meltdown of the stock market, this book has its highs and lows. I am somewhat torn how I feel. Enough compels me to keep reading to see where this “coming of age” story goes and to say that this is a promising debut novel.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2017/01/the-futures.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

While it may not seem like it at first, this would be an excellent book for graduating college students. Pitoniak does an amazing job of weaving her character's lives together and then just as easily letting it all fall part. Unlike other novels I've encountered, this one did an excellent job of managing time jumps and allowing you to settle within the different characters heads. It's an excellent reminder that it's okay to not always have a plan as long as you make sure that you're finding away to embrace yourself.

Anna Pitoniak’s debut novel, The Futures is about two recent college grads trying to find success and their way in the real world. It’s 2008 and the beginning of financial instability for this country. Julia and Evan have been dating for a couple of years are college sweethearts and are deeply in love. They both just graduated from Yale and are excited to be moving in together in New York City. Julia is unsure of what she wants to do with her life and Evan is working at a reputable hedge fund corporation. However, they soon become distant, cold and rather selfish. I appreciated the ease and flow of the novel and Pitoniak’s writing and description of NYC, but felt it lacked more diverse and multicultural characters (it is NYC after all). I found the book to be okay. Perhaps millennials will identify with the characters more than I did.

THE FUTURES by Anna Pitoniak is a debut novel told in alternating voices by Julia and Evan, new college graduates who move to New York. There, Evan who is from a small, rural town in Canada takes a job with a hedge fund and becomes more and more embroiled in the world of high finance, including some questionable ethical decisions. Julia comes from a more privileged background and yet struggles to find a job and herself.

Both are extremely self-centered (as fits their age and relative entitlement?). Some of the most interesting parts of this novel were the conflicting reactions that they displayed to the same events. I think that adult book groups (especially if the members have children in their 20s) will find this to be both a fascinating and devastating recounting of life just out of college. Character-driven and emotional with much internal musings.

This started strong but didn't hold up for me for the length of the book. I enjoyed the different points of view, but became more invested in Julia's story and less interested in the Evan chapters.

Life Inside a Diorama: on Anna Pitoniak’s ‘The Futures’

Ivy League graduates may assume that the future is guaranteed. But life reversals— especially if you’re living in the shadow-power world of millennial Wall Street—might prove otherwise. The stakes (aside from ‘will this relationship survive’) aren’t entirely clear at first. Then Evan’s mentor draws him into a morally tricky deal and Julia tells more than she should to her clandestine lover, Adam.

The story of Julia and Evan’s romance (and long, emotional break-up) is revealed in alternating POV chapters. This structure is well crafted, exposing interior thoughts and motivations. Evan grew up in rural BC, Canada, attending college on an ice hockey scholarship, while Julia is an Ivy League legacy.

Evan: “The friction of the blade melted the ice just enough, sending me flying forward on threads of invisible water. I was in a different country, a different side of the continent, but in those moments at the rink, home came with me. The ice was a reminder of the world I had left behind…”

Julia: “Adam and I had spent the weekend at his apartment, which was the best birthday present I could have asked for. He cooked, we listened to jazz, and I sat on the couch reading and watching the Hudson flow past. ‘Evan should go out of town more,’ he said when I emerged from the shower wearing one of his button-downs. ‘Where did you say he was again?’”

Strongest passages include pitch-perfect dialogue and details of scene. In other places, interior wonderings of the main characters wander into summary and summing up, when the reader might prefer to linger in the middle of one of the high-stakes conversations/arguments that fuel the perfectly nuanced plot.

After a series of mistakes, Julia comes to trust that her love for NYC itself is more enduring than any affair. “Manhattan was like a dazzling life-size diorama. A motivation to work harder, stay later, wake earlier.”
I highly recommend this entertaining women’s fiction to fans of JoJo Moyes, Sloane Crosley, and Meg Wolitzer.

The Futures by Anna Pitoniak (debut)
Publisher: Lee Bourdeaux Books
Release Date: January 17, 2017
Length: 320 pages

Single Sentence Summary: A hopeful young couple take on NYC in 2008, just as the economy (and much of their world) is collapsing.

Primary Characters: Julia – grew up privileged in Boston, went to Yale, but has no clear vision of what she wants from her life. Evan – grew up in British Columbia, went to Yale on a hockey scholarship, landed a prestigious job at a hedge fund.

Synopsis: The Futures, Anna Pitoniak’s debut novel, gives the reader a peek into the lives of a young couple in their first year out of college. Yale grads Julia and Evan move to New York City in 2008, just as the economy is taking a nosedive. Evan works crazy hours at a hedge fund and Julia…? Well, Julia doesn’t really know what she wants. Their lives are littered with obstacles, both real and imagined, making it next to impossible for their relationship to survive.

Review: A fellow blogger, Sarah@sarah’sbookshelves, calls books like The Futures “brain candy.” That’s an apt description of this compelling, quick read. I didn’t always love the story and I definitely didn’t like all the characters, but I was always interested in what was coming next.

I may be too old to judge what’s normal for Millennials as they spread their wings. If I were to do so, my judgment of Julia and Evan would be harsh. I found them both to be whiney, especially Julia. To be truthful, I liked very little about Julia other than the fact that she drove the story. This was a girl who was never happy and always felt sorry for herself! In so many ways Evan and Julia were two incredibly lucky people. Evan seemed to understand that, but Julia never did. Are these characters inline with what we’ve come to think of as “Millennial” qualities: confidence, hope, entitlement, disillusionment, and sometimes narcissism? Julia definitely embodies the less flattering characteristics.

“But something had changed soon after we started working. I was plagued with a new dissatisfaction. Was this it, was this everything? Was this my life from now on?”

Anna Patoniak’s writing is straightforward, and unemotional, alternating between Evan’s and Julia’s perspectives. She beautifully used New York as a backdrop to their story. As a coming-of-age story, The Futures both succeeded and failed. Success came in the challenges Evan faced and in the lengths he went to for recovery and growth. With Julia, I’m less convinced. She faced very hard times (largely of her own making), but was she made new? I have serious doubts. If the story went on, I believe Julia would continue to feel like the world was not offering up what was best for her. I may be totally wrong on The Futures, and would love to hear thoughts from some readers in their 20’s and 30’s, but for me the subtitle might be, “Millennials!” Grade: C+

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read and review this book!

I really enjoyed this debut novel set in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. Told in alternating voices and timelines, this book will take you back to the time where your place in life felt scary and your choices and actions reflect that.

Julia and Evan are a young couple, college sweethearts, who move to NYC for the start of their grown-up life. Evan has a job with a hedge fund and Julia flounders a bit trying to find a job and a place in the city. Evan becomes so involved in work that everything else gets neglected, including Julia, who looks for someone to fill that void.

The plot of the novel - what happens with Evan's job - becomes almost secondary to the feelings that everyone in this novel experience as they are trying to find their way. Kind of a more grown-up coming of age story. While our paths are different, everyone can relate to the struggles of finding oneself and hoping not to lose yourself in the process.

A wonderful debut novel - loved the characters (most of them!) and the feelings it invoked - plus there were definitely life lessons to be learned here.

The Futures by Anna Pitoniak
Fiction – Debut (Release Date: January 17, 2017)
320 Pages
Bottom Line: Skip it.
Affiliate Link: Amazon
Source: Publisher (Lee Boudreaux Books)

Plot Summary:
When college sweethearts Evan and Julia move to New York City after graduating from Yale, they face a tougher road than they imagined finding their place in the post-college world.

My Thoughts:
I quite honestly don’t have a lot to say about The Futures. It’s the story of a quarter life crisis…something I certainly went through and could identify with. The “coming of age in your twenties in the big city” storyline always seems to suck me in, yet has proved disappointing the past few rounds (also Why We Came to the City).

Julia and Evan’s college and immediate post-college experience resembled my own to a certain extent (minus the Ivy League tag). Despite or (possibly because of?) this relatability, the plot was predictable and not particularly memorable. I was disappointed with the lack of “yes, that’s exactly how it is” writing, which could have upped the memorability factor for me. On the plus side, it was a nice, easy Brain Candy book that I never had to force myself to pick up.

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.

Thank you to NetGalley, especially Lee Boudreaux Books, for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Futures by Anna Pitoniak starts as a campus novel and then moves to New York. It had my name written all over it…

Julia’s dating guy #1. She cheats on him with guy #2. Meanwhile, she meets guy #3, and they start a relationship. Julia and #3 move to New York, where #3 starts working long hours and becomes involved in some dubious hedge fund deals. Julia, annoyed, hooks up with #2 again (but doesn’t break it off with #3). Julia heads home for Thanksgiving, disgruntled with both #2 and #3. Guess who she meets in her hometown? #1!

God. I could go on but honestly, this story promised so much yet delivered a plot that was trite and obvious, and characters that were basic. In fact, the story was so one-dimensional that it was just one big rich-white-people-cliche. And it was clunky. And irritating.

I almost abandoned The Futures – aside from the fact that it’s a first-world-problems story, Pitoniak spells out every single thing for her reader (perhaps assuming we’re as dumb as Julia?) –

“I could never marry Evan. Never, ever. Evan wasn’t someone I could have a life with. We were too different, and he didn’t care about me. That’s why it felt so natural, sliding into this new thing with Adam. Evan and I were clearly headed for a breakup. It was only a question of time. So why didn’t I rip the bandage off? Why keep living with someone for whom I felt nothing? Ending things would have kept me from cheating on Evan. It would have prevented so much of the collateral damage. But that decision would have taken conviction. Planning and execution. And frankly, it wold have required that I find my own place to live, which was annoying and prohibitively expensive.”

FFS. Go on living with someone, and cheating on them, because you can’t be bothered looking in the classifieds? Yeah, that’s mature.

It was the occasional glimpses of New York and a few insights into that weird time between finishing university and starting a job (when you’re in a panicked limbo), that kept me reading until the bitter end –

“In New York, we settled into a routine along with our friends, accruing habit fast. We all endured the same things: shoe-box apartments, crowded subways, overpriced groceries, indifferent bosses. What kept everyone going was the dream: store windows on Madison Avenue, brownstones lit golden in the night, town cars gliding across the park.”

2/5 Boring and obvious.

I received my copy of The Futures from the publisher, Little, Brown & Company, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review

Not only do Julia and Evan have the usual after college experiences, frustrations and challenges that most people have, they also have their social rankings to deal with. And then it is also 2008. And, Evan decides to become a hedge fund trader. On the cusp of the evil empire, Enron, having cooked all their books. Now, we find out that the banking industry is fixing to tank. And Evan's boss, not learning enough from the evil empire, has decided to do a little cooking of his own and include Evan. Maybe not so much cooking as bribing. However, Evan has no idea. He's in over his head.

This poor couple doesn't stand a chance. Julia has a 9 to 5 job and sits home and waits. She's wondering if Evan is the one for her, did she do the right thing, etc. etc. Evan is at work all the time and even when he isn't at work, he is. He's worried about what's going on, what could happen, did he do the figures right etc., etc.

My review makes it sound tedious, but the author makes it sound a lot better, believe me. This was definitely a great read. It was about relationships, life, even a little thriller momentum going through it, and just growing up. Loved it!

Huge thanks to Little, Brown and Company for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

The Futures takes us on a journey with a young couple who meet in college and then continue their relationship as they enter the world of work and careers in New York City. As can be expected, things do not go smoothly. It is almost like a ride on a see-saw, when one is up the other is down. Although a familiar story, I was drawn into the lives of this young couple and their struggles. There are no surprises here, but a solid and worthy read.