Author Maureen Sherry brings her real-life experience as a former Wall Street Managing Director to this fictional tale of Isabelle McElroy, an over-worked, under-appreciated, Wall Street Managing Director who is also the mom of three young children, and wife to a husband who has lost interest in working (or carrying his share of the load at home).

As with most books in the working-mom genre, Sherry delivers comical episodes of "overwhelmed mom trying to do too much," usually taking place at the kids' school in front the "Barbie" moms. Of course, unfairness at work abounds (Sherry's descriptions of Wall Street's sexist antics won't make any friends among those already distrustful of the group). What makes this book a bit unique among others of its type is a pretty good lay-person's description of the 2008 financial meltdown (useful for those who haven't read or seen "The Big Short," and even those that have) as well as a look at the way class plays a role among the American rich (self-made millionaires vs. those who have been groomed for the family way of life).

This book is an entertaining diversion for readers for looking for a highly-readable book to zoom through in a couple of days.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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It was ok, kind of the typical NYC hot shot "lean in" mommy book but with the 2008 market crash going on in the background ( )

“Humiliation takes my relatively thick skin and morphs it into full-grain leather,”
― Maureen Sherry, Opening Belle

This book is not bad at all. And it was fun to read the adventures of a female Wall Street executive. Yet for some reason I could not get into this book as much as I thought I would.

I think that maybe more my issue then anything to do with the writing. I have found in the last few years that I have this issue when reading any book about Wall Street including the widely known "Wolf of Wall street" so it maybe just a subject that I do not find compelling enough. One thing that I will say is I admire the writer's courage. I cannot think of anywhere less appealing to work then on Wall Street and the book did nothing to change my mind on that score but it is interesting to read about this subject through the eyes of a female which I had not done. So even though it wasn't a book for me it may well be a book for someone more interested in the subject matter. ( )

maybe 2.5 stars ( )

This book had so many issues that I honestly wish I had DNFed it and moved onto something else.

There really isn't anything here that makes this particularly book great. Ms. Sherry does try to explain the finance world by way of her character, but every time she tries to things fall flat. She should have taken a page out of "The Big Short" and had a celebrity break the fourth wall to explain things that are happening at particular parts of the book.

The main character of "Opening Belle" is Isabelle (known as Belle) who is a managing director at an investment firm. She is trying to juggle her three kids (though it changes from three to one and back to three again during the course of the book) her unemployed husband, her clients, and the male dominated world of investment banking.

Belle should have been a character I could root for. I am also employed in a male dominated industry so I was hoping to see what has she done in order to get promoted up the ladder without having to give in to things she knows is wrong. However, Belle goes around making a lot of excuses for every male in her direction vicinity. She makes excuses for why her husband doesn't work, why certain partners go around touching women and making lewd comments, why certain women don't get promoted.

It begins to get tedious and then we have the mother of all excuses for Belle, why in the world she chooses to make excuses for her ex fiancee (Henry) who dumped her in the cruelest way in this book. I really wanted to shake Belle at that point, because we go into what happened between the two of them in this book and she still doesn't demand an apology and even puts up with this man's flirting.

We don't get much traction on other characters. We have Belle meeting here and there with a so called glassed ceilings group that consists of women getting together to discuss how to improve things, but Sherry really doesn't follow up with it at all. We get a couple of asides made by a mysterious person who writes letters to the entire investment firm calling out certain behaviors/people but that once again is not followed up with since we have so many side plots with Belle to work through.

Belle's husband was merely there to move the plot. I could not see what attracted her to this character, let alone why she stayed with him. Sherry could have said so much more there about a woman who was the primary breadwinner of her family, who was expected to still do housework and drop off the kids even though her husband was home all day with the kids. I would have loved to see Belle ever stand up for herself or just call out the crap that her husband was getting away with.

The writing wasn't that great, and I was bored at certain times. I mentioned in my updates there were typos here and there. Belle's voice was grating and I was really sick of reading her justification for a lot of things that this book showcases. Belle was just a doormat plain and simple, and I was not running around thinking I am woman, hear me roar, when it came to her. Heck we didn't even realize she had any family until the tail end of the book when we had a scene between her and her sister.

What really drove me crazy was the structure of the book. We had a "present" day Belle (2008) talking about herself back in college, back in 2008, back when she broke up with her fiancee back to 2008, back to how she met her husband, back to 2008, back to how she tried to get her first child into an upscale pre-school, back to 2008, and oh time jump in the end.

The setting of Wall Street in 2008 could have been interesting. Instead it was not utilized enough until the very end when we got some paragraphs here and there about how the firms on Wall Street and some of the big banks were left reeling. I really wanted to read more about families that Belle knew from her preschool were affected, what about certain clients? All of that seemed glossed over and could have provided more of a punch to the book.

The ending just left a lot of things up in the air with Belle and her family. I really would not recommend this to anyone. ( )