Our Little Racket

A Novel

By: Angelica Baker

Narrated by: Therese Plummer

Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

A captivating debut about wealth, envy, and secrets: the story of five women whose lives are dramatically changed by the downfall of a financial titan.

On September 15, 2008, the world of Greenwich, Connecticut, is shaken. When the investment bank Weiss & Partners is shuttered, CEO Bob D'Amico must fend off allegations of malfeasance as well as the judgment and resentment of his community. As panic builds, five women in his life must scramble to negotiate power on their own terms and ask themselves what - if anything - is worth saving.

In the aftermath of this collapse, Bob D'Amico's teenage daughter, Madison, begins to probe her father's theretofore secret world for information. Four other women in Madison's life - her mother, Isabel; her best friend, Amanda; her nanny, Lily; and family friend Mina - begin to question their own shifting roles in their insular, moneyed world.

For the adults this means learning how to protect their own in a community that has turned against them. For the younger generation, it means heightened rebellion and heartache during the already volatile teenage years. And for Lily it means deciding where her loyalties lie when it comes to the family in which she is both an essential member and, ultimately, an outsider. All these women have witnessed more than they've disclosed, all harbor secret insecurities and fears, and all must ask themselves, where is the line between willful ignorance and unspoken complicity?

With astonishing precision, insight, and grace, Angelica Baker weaves a timeless social novel about the rituals of intimacy and community, of privilege and information, of family and risk, of etiquette and taboo.

©2017 Angelica Baker (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers

Loved the narrator!

The narrator had to play so many rolls, yet she did a fantastic job in each of them. Was great to listen to!

A fun story with substance!

Where does Our Little Racket rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Our Little Racket has been one of my favorite audiobooks! The scandal, gossip, and back-stabbing played out by the wealthy elite makes the story so fun, but it is also a unique and thoughtful view of the financial crisis fallout. And I love the compelling portrayal of the relationships among the five women it follows, and how they each consider their options and their own self-preservation...

Kicking myself for wasting time.

I have a principle: if I get half-way through a book, I won't return since it doesn't seem fair to Audible. I should have stopped reading this one within the first 40 pages. The only redeeming quality is the marvelous reader, Therese Plummer.

This over-long "story" could have been told in about 4 hours (vs. 15). The characters - even the main one - are never fully developed. The story dips up, down and around whatever the "main event" is supposed to be and never gets to a point. It's hard to remember the who the secondary and tertiary the character because there are so many that the names just kind of melt together. The ending of the 'story" is just kind of thrown in as if the writer got tired of searching for a logical conclusion and needed to finally stop. Mercifully.

I rarely do a write-up on a book because it reminds me of all the ones I had to write for my MA in Lit at NYU. These days, I just like to enjoy a story. But this one made me want to warn others: don't waste the credit.