Book ~ "The Futures" (2017) Anna Pitoniak

From Goodreads ~ Julia and Evan fall in love as undergraduates at Yale. For Evan, a scholarship student from a Canadian logging town, Yale is a whole new world, and Julia - blonde, beautiful and rich - fits perfectly into the future he’s envisioned for himself. After graduation, and on the eve of the great financial meltdown of 2008, they move together to New York City, where Evan takes a job at a hedge fund. But Julia, who has only known a life of privilege, feels unmoored and increasingly shut out of Evan’s secretive world.

With the market crashing and banks failing, Evan becomes involved in an increasingly high-stakes deal at work -a deal that, despite the assurance of his Machiavellian boss, begins to feel more than slightly suspicious. Meanwhile, Julia reconnects with someone from her past who offers a glimpse of a different kind of life. As Evan and Julia spin apart into their separate orbits, they each find that they are capable of much more - good and bad - that they’d ever dreamed, and that betrayal is easier than they ever imagined.

Julia and Evan met in university.  She came from a rich family from Boston and Evan was there on a hockey scholarship from the middle of British Columbia (his parents own the only grocery store in town).  They started out as friends before they got together.  Four years later, they have graduated and have moved to New York and live together.

Evan has gotten a job right away with a hedge fund.  His salary is high but the job has a lot of pressure and he has to work a lot of hours.  Julia gets a job as an assistant at a foundation.  She doesn't know what she wants to do with her life and doesn't find the job overly fulfilling.  Evan becomes part of a project at work, which keeps him at the office even more, and Julia has to fill her time, eventually connecting with someone she'd gone to school with.  Eventually they begin to drift apart.  In the background is the stock market crash of 2008 and what was happening in the financial markets at the time.

This is the debut novel by this author and I liked it.  It is written in first person perspective from Julia and Evan's points of view ... that chapters alternate and are labeled so you know whose voice it is.  This was an interesting style as the same incident is described at times but from the different perspectives.  I liked the writing style.  As a head's up, there is swearing.

The characters are young and fresh out of university.  Neither has the maturity to realize what their actions (or lack of actions) is doing to the relationship.  Yes, he did ignore Julia because he was so driven to succeed but I didn't mind him.  I didn't warm up to Julia at all during the book even when things were going well between her and Evan.

I'll keep an eye out for future books by this author.