Review--The Underwriting by Michelle Miller

The Underwriting by Michelle Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hook is the hottest new dating app.  It's location based and as long as two users match each other they can "hook" up in a matter of minutes.
Jost Hart, Hook's creator, believes it's time to follow in the steps of Facebook and other apps and take his public.  He enlist Todd Kent with L.Cecil to help with the IPO.  Todd barely knows Josh, having just met him briefly at a strip club months before, but is grateful for the opportunity seeing the potential in the app since he is one of it's users.

Kelly Jacobsen is also a Hook user, one of about 500 million.  She has just accepted a position at L.Cecil after interning there over the summer.  Now, back at Stanford, she reaches out to Tara Taylor, her mentor during the internship, letting her know of the decision.  Tara is very excited for Kelly, this along with being named as part of the IPO team for Hook is really making her week.  But after making this decision and spending a night out with friends, the next day, Kelly is found dead, with a drug overdose as the explanation.  Her friends and family are baffled by this as this is something she would never do.

The death of a young co-ed and the introduction of a new company going public.  Could these events be related in any way?  Could Hook somehow be involved with Kelly's untimely demise?  As the buzz for the IPO grows so does the speculation of the security of the app and it's users.

With so many changes happening so quickly, what will be the outcome?  This book is filled with sex, lies, and billions of dollars, never a great combination when dealing with murder!

When first reading this book I was shocked at the number of different characters introduced so quickly.  The book was fast paced from the start.  ou meet the team of L.Cecil bankers in charge of the underwriting.  From the guy at the top, to the little-a analyst who is crunching all of the numbers.  You meet the guys in Silicon Valley from the creator of the app, to the engineers, that help to keep it running.

Everyone has their own agenda in this deal.  To be bigger, better, and more powerful than before.  And with billions of dollars on the table, the deal would do just that.  This was an intriguing book, that thoroughly kept my attention.  After reading one night I had very vivid dream about the book.  I was sitting at the table with everyone, trying to make the deal work.  It was a bit crazy for me.  There are parts of this book that leave you with your mouth hanging open as you can't believe what you just read.
**I received an uncorrected advanced proof of this book from FirstToRead in exchange for my honest review.**

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