Darlings (Alger) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Alger, who has worked at Goldman Sachs as well as at a white-shoe law firm, knows her way around 21st-century wealth and power, and she tells a suspenseful, twisty story.
Wall Street Journal


What happens to the Darling family in the course of a weekend is what carries this tale along, but it’s Alger’s description of quintessential New Yorkers, and how they survive, that adds the extra layer.... Alger has what it takes, in the best sense of the phrase.
USA Today


Penned by a former banker, this is a dishy yet thoughtful portrait of greed gone too far.... A page-turner.
Good Housekeeping


Forget Gossip Girl: If you really want a peek into the scandalous lives of New York City's elite upper class, Alger's debut novel—set during the financial downturn of 2008—gets you pretty close. The hedge funds, designer clothes, and lush Hamptons homes are all on display. But Alger also deftly juggles a complicated and myriad cast of characters who orbit around an It Family, the Darlings, who are at the center of a Madoff-like Ponzi scheme. The Darlings moves so fast that it feels more like a thriller than a social drama.
Entertainment Weekly


[S]ophisticated central characterizations make this novel well worth the time; Alger expertly evokes both sympathy and contempt for her characters and writes with a polished ease, telling the story of our time (or a particular glittery, corrupt corner of our time) with a mix of ruthlessness and sensitivity.
Publishers Weekly


Alger introduces us to flawed but sympathetically drawn characters and depicts socialite parties, luscious dinners, exquisite clothes, and holidays in the Hamptons.... [A] financial thriller with a tone that fits somewhere between the novels of Dominick Dunne (though not as flippant) and Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities (though not as serious). —Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Lib., Washington, DC
Library Journal


Probably the most compulsively readable fiction to come out of the Wall Steet financial scandal so far.... Alger knows the ins and outs of both Wall Street and an upscale NYC lifestyle, nailing all the details, from the plush, hushed atmosphere of high-end law firms to the right tennis togs for a "casual" weekend in the Hamptons. Delicious reading.
Booklist