The Expats by Chris Pavone, 2012

I typically do not read spy thrillers, but I saw The Expats at the library and figured since I would be traveling to Europe for holiday, why not?

A clever "who's spying on whom" story, The Expats leaves you guessing until the end.

Kate Moore is the protagonist who begins to suspect that her new American friends in Belgium may not be whom they appear to be.

Worse, she begins to suspect that her husband Dexter may be hiding secrets of his own.

More than a spy story, The Expats weaves in the challenges of starting a new life in a foreign country and isolation of not being able to talk to your partner openly.

I was rooting for Kate throughout and anxiously flipping the pages to get to the big reveal of everyone's true identities and intentions.

Apparently, I was not the only one as The Expats was the recipient of the 2013 Edgar Award and Chris Pavone the recipient of the Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

Drama High by Michael Sokolove, 2013

The full title of this book is: Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater.  So, a lot is packed in.

The central figure of the book is Lou Volpe, a high school drama director who consistently produces nationally recognized high school productions and is entrusted by Broadway legends to develop productions suited for high schools while doing justice to the original piece.

The  backdrop for Volpe's magic and passion is Harry S Truman High School, located in a town where people worked steady factory jobs, but are now constantly being laid off and struggling to find consistent employment.

Volpe achieves greater success than other high schools with students who possess acting coaches and take voice lessons. 

Truman students do not do these things.  Truman students come from broken homes, crowded living spaces and often have jobs themselves to help support their families.

The contrast is evident when one Truman student interviews for a scholarship opportunity, and is asked about community service.

He describes how he helps kids in his neighborhood with trick-or-treating, but can tell this is not the answer the scholarship panel is looking for.

He then answers honestly - that he attends school, goes to theater rehearsals and then works a job at a fast food restaurant.  Community service is not a concept that he, or most Truman kids, are familiar with.

At Truman, Volpe has built a theater program much like "Glee," where it's acceptable for jocks and popular kids to do theater.  Part of this is because under Volpe's guidance, his kids are exposed to so much more than a play or what Levittown can offer.

His kids are taught to think beyond the words written on a page, to reach within themselves to become the character and are challenged each day during rehearsals.

The majority of the book centers around the production of Good Boys and True, a modern play about a popular, privileged boy who films a sexual encounter with a girl he meets at the bar. 

The boy's perfect and privileged life falls part as his mother is humiliated by his actions and the hurt caused to the girl in the tape.

His relationship with his best friend, who is gay and with whom he has had sexual contact with, adds complexity to motivations of accidentally leaving the sex tape to be discovered.

A group of six, the cast of Good Boys and True do a tremendous job.  Not only are they invited to perform at the Main Stage at the International Thespian Festival in Nebraska, but also receive a standing ovation.  One of the actresses is mistakenly for a professional actress. 

They form a bond that can only be formed when you're young and your life is consumed by the moment.  As part of practices before national high school theater festivals, the cast sits back to back in a row of three to recite their lines of the play.  If anyone makes a mistake, the group begins again, starting from the first line of the play.

Although interesting, Drama High is all over the place, even more so than the sub-title indicates.  In addition to Volpe and Truman High School, Sokolove talks about the town, including his own experience growing up in Levittown.  National politics - No Child Left Behind - gets a chapter, as does Tracey Krause, Volpe's assistant director.  

Krause is a bad ass and someone worth writing about, but it's another tangent that distracts from the most compelling part of the story, which has to do with the production and kids of Good Boys and True.

The book would have been a lot sharper and focused if the book centered around the cast and how the kids ended up after graduating from Truman, given what Volpe has provided them. 

The human interest, underdog story.  Instead, Sokolove takes tangents on different topics, and even starts writing about another production Volpe puts on before his retirement in 2013.

At least with social media today, there's a way to find out how the cast is doing given how Volpe opened up the world to them.

Young Money by Kevin Roose, 2014

An insightful view into Wall Street, Young Money is a fast read that follows a group of recent college graduates who take jobs with Wall Street investment firms. 

Highly compensated with over six-figure salaries, these recruits are expected to work night and weekends, 24 hours straight.

The work is soul crushing - rote assignments that are given at the end of the day that are to be completed by the next morning. 

There is no intellectual stimulation - they put together Excel reports.  With their Ivy League degrees.  Worse, the reports may not even get looked at.  

For the hours they work, there is little compensation besides monetary compensation as the six-figure salaries are supplemented by bonuses in the tens of thousands. 

Although generous, the bonuses are no longer in the millions as they were before the 2008 financial downtown.  There are many other positions and companies now that offer bonuses in the tens of thousands. 

As entry-level workers, the people - well, kids - profiled in the book come from modest backgrounds and have not reached the height of wealth and decadence that Wall Street is known for.  Two of the eight kids profiled do stay in investment, and are becoming out of touch adults whose sense of reality becomes colored by the negative aspects of money and wealth.

With short-tempered colleagues who live by the "time is money" mantra, years working on Wall Street results in a skewed sense of priorities, culminating in the infamous Kappa Beta Phi society composed of Wall Street elites who host a dinner with skits that demonstrate how silly, sophomoric and frankly, obnoxious, these people can be.

There will never be a shortage of bankers or applicants for Wall Street jobs, but the world is changing.  Wall Street is becoming archaic starting to look and sound like the stodgy old man who mutters "kids today" under his breath.

With the 2008 financial crisis and 2010 Occupy Wall Street protests, recruitment for investment firms at top colleges are down. Technology companies are disrupting the pecking order for undergraduate (and business school) recruits.

Wall Street is no longer the only place for well-paying jobs that can potentially make someone a millionaire, as technology companies provide stock options and potential billion dollar IPOs.

Technology companies, especially start ups, also have long hours and all-nighters, but the work is more rewarding than that of being Excel monkees.  The work associated with creating something involves making decisions, individual contributions and being creative; work that provides a sense of accomplishment.

The lack of fulfillment described by the kids profiled in Young Money echos the sentiment captured in Lloyd Dobler's (John Cusack) soliloquy in Say Anything:

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.

I finished Young Money during a weekend trip to New York City to celebrate a birthday.  Staying in the upper East side and dining at wonderful places like Asiate was the perfect backdrop for reading the book.

Crazy Love by Leslie Morgan Steiner, 2009

It has been awhile since I've stayed up late to read a book.  A memoir that holds you like the best fiction, Crazy Love is the story of a privileged young woman who falls under the spell of a charismatic banker she meets in New York City.

With a degree from Harvard and a job at Seventeen providing young women advice on empowerment (as well as cute outfits), Steiner soon falls into a whirlwind courtship that ends at the alter a few days after she is first assaulted by her husband-to-be.

Like the reader, she knows something is wrong and asks her father to breakfast the morning of the wedding to share her fears.  She even imagines canceling the wedding.

However, her father forgets the breakfast appointment and Steiner finds herself marrying a monster.

The abuse is described in a matter-of-fact tone - he hits her, grabs her by the throat, throws her down the stairs and puts a gun to her head.  The most chilling scenes are the day to day interactions where Connor's anger bubbles up and is triggered by something completely innocent.  I wince and cower in fear for Steiner.

During her marriage, she approaches the problem as a writer and researches battered women and not surprisingly, sees herself in these women.  When she finally find someone who studies the men who batter, she realizes that Connor falls into the exact pattern of abusers - growing up abused, isolating his "victims" and using violence as a way to show love.

She realizes that her love for Connor won't save him and eventually, is able to do something most battered women are not able to - she leaves Connor.  It's not easy - she fears for her life, sees friends and associates still spending time with him despite knowing the truth, and misses him incredibly much.

Even as he sues her for alimony, attempts to undermine her and ingratiate himself with her family, she forces herself to move on and rebuild her life.  Sadly, Connor is able to do the same thing.

At their business school graduation, Steiner sees Connor with his new girlfriend as they mingle with people who are aware of Connor's abusive past.  Despite being known as a wife-beater, he easily becomes the successful business school graduate with a new girlfriend and will most likely lead a successful life while other turn a blind eye to his abusive nature.

In other words, he gets away with it.  Even attempting to identify the real Connor, references have has been removed  to Steiner's past and nothing on Google provides a hint to who the real Connor is.

Crazy Love is eye-opening and a must-ready for anyone in the situation Steiner found herself in, or for anyone who knows someone in that situation.