What a shame! I had such high hopes for "Black Buck". The beginning seemed really quirky, cute, and full of personality. I found all the secondary characters to be so over-the-top and unrealistic. The main character, Darren felt like a real person. His character had the best conflict between good and evil. After a while though, even Darren was behaving in an absurd way. I just didn't care after that. The ending was ridiculous. The author is talented, but he tried way too hard to add so many different plot/ideas/social commentary in one book. This baby felt like a tv mini-series than a novel. Huge disappointment. Sometimes less is more.

Darren Vender was the valedictorian of his high school class but now works at Starbuck's as a supervisor and likes his job. He is happy living at home with his mom, has a long term girlfriend and is respected at work. They are all telling him that he has to do something more, be more ambitious. Then one morning one of his regular customers comes in and Darren upsells him on a different drink and the guy offers him a job at his tech company upstairs. He goes through a brutal orientation and training as the only black person there. The company, Sumwun, sells visions and seems kind of sketchy. During the course of a year Darren, now called Buck, reaches the highest highs and the lowest lows. I don't want to give out anymore plot details but I will say at the beginning of the book I really liked Darren but then about half way he has turned into such a jerk and not likeable at all. The other thing I found unbelievable is that this whole story takes place over a year's time. That kind of stretches my level of believability.

The book is labeled as satire but I didn't find it funny. I just found it sad. It was a pretty quick readable and flowed from one thing to the other. Just because I didn't like Buck towards the end I did like the book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for a copy of this book.

4.5/5 I wasn't sure if I was going to like this one at all and I ended up finishing it in one day! The story is pretty much bonkers and goes off the rails in so many ways, but the writing was witty and extremely engaging. Overall, my only complaint is that I don't know what the book is trying to say about society and I'm not sure how to feel about the ending. Is it saying that black people are doomed to fail? Or that there always needs to be a martyr for a cause? Or are we supposed to think he got what he deserved because he had turned into a horrible person? Definitely one that would be good for book club discussions.

Black Buck is unlike any other book I have read. Darren, an incredibly bright 20-something, finds himself working for Rhett Daniels, CEO of an elite tech start up after 4 years of working at Starbucks. The only Black person working at Sumwun, he begins to refer to himself as Buck and becomes unrecognizable to friends and family. After tragedy hits, Buck finds himself organizing an underground society to teach young people of color skills necessary to find well paying jobs in the sales force. His life changes forever as chaos ensues.

Mateo Askaripour does an incredible job with this book. Buck tells the story to the reader, as a training manual on how to become a salesperson. He touches on race, in and out of the workplace. A serious subject, however written in a light manner. I did not find this book to be heavy or difficult to read (although there were parts that made me cringe!) It was an eye opening perspective on the workforce and how it can change a person. I highly recommend this book!

Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour is a satirical novel on the sales industry and just being a BIPOC in a white man's world. The book is narrated by Darren AKA Buck through writing a sales manual/memoir for black people (yes, it’s entitled Black Buck, because he is black).

Black Buck follows Darren as he creates a new persona when he gets an unexpected opportunity to join the sales world as Buck. Buck is ruthless and will do anything to get a deal and make quota, even make nice with the white frat boy culture in the office. Well, that’s until tragedy strikes, and then? Then he’s ready to give back. Watch the character arc of Buck becoming someone those who love him can’t recognize and his fall from grace to his way back up and the challenges that greet him along the way. Oh, and also be ready for some tips to be a great salesman.

This book was a book in a book, which you know, I love, and the social commentary was on point. This book showed how a capitalist nation like the US, one that thrives on other peoples failures, having people to step on top of on the way up, can make all the difference. How some people start several steps ahead of others whether it be by their wealthy connections, their gender, or the color of their skin. It comments on how white supremacy and the white supremacists are easily enraged by any disruption or potential threats to their power and the lengths they’ll go to keep it. This book was outrageous at times but hit home and made every point stick.

NOW, I am going to say this book can get uncomfortable, but the good uncomfortable. The kind of uncomfortable that spurs important conversations.

This book has cutting humor. Great social commentary. And it was a book was fast paced and I couldn’t put it down.

I loved this book! First of all, I'm a Starbucks girl and secondly, I’m in sales, so I have to say I was intrigued- and hooked from the first page. The language and conversation style of writing is so engaging, it was impossible for me to put this book down! 

Black Buck offers dueling insights into how both black and white communities perceive a black man in corporate America. Darren, the Starbucks barista, is transformed into Buck, the man who can successfully sell anything. Author Mateo Askaripur takes us on a ride as he tackles significant and relevant issues, with satirical wit, which had me laughing out loud many times throughout the story. I could not help but root for Buck the entire time; as he encounters and attempts to overcome the systemic roadblocks of white privilege, as he climbs the corporate ladder, and as he extends a hand to help other people of color find a path to success. 

The characters in the story are masterfully crafted by Askaripour. I have to extend an honorable mention to Wild Cat, I just loved him and his wisdom! Askaripour infuses all of the people around Buck with a plausibility that makes their personal journeys believable, inspiring and compelling, to the very last page of the book.

What an excellent job the author did with this debut, I have become a big fan and look forward to future books.

In a Wolf of Wall Street meets When No One is Watching-esque satirical commentary on startup culture, Darren Vender gets sucked into the world of business. After a bold move during a shift at Starbucks, Darren is recruited into sales at therapy-alternative startup, Sumwun. Given the nickname Buck, Darren climbs the business ladder, losing himself almost entirely before stumbling into greater purpose.

Black Buck is written in the style of a memoir/business self-help book, with Buck weaving in tips for how to engage in sales effectively. The novel, set in Brooklyn and Manhattan, addresses themes related to overt and systemic racism in startup culture, white supremacy, gentrification, hustle culture, and ethical liability.

As a therapist, I was both fascinated and horrified by the concept of Sumwun, especially as it’s reality-adjacent. I enjoyed seeing Darren/Buck grapple with his self identity and values, and really appreciated him as a flawed character.

I found Black Buck to be a gripping, compelling, and at times wild ride, and would recommend Mateo Askaripour’s debut to those skeptical about the ethics of “socially-focused” startups.

Thank you to NetGalley, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and the author for an advanced copy of this book, which releases January 5, 2021.

This is a very funny and perceptive satire of race, business (especially the tech sector), and the cult(ure) of salesmanship. Written in the format of a sales "how-to" book, it captures the silliness of that genre, and his send-up of the business world shows the inanity of a lot of "disruptive" and "cutting edge" corporate practices. This is all great fun.

More importantly, Askaripour illustrates the casual racism of the workplace and shows how hard it is for a person of color to be successful in that world while holding on to his integrity. Here again, he can be extremely funny and insightful (sales teams in one company naming themselves after hip hop performers, e.g.). Things do get a little over the top in the last section of the book, but that's fitting with the overall arc of the story.

And the story itself is pretty good. The characters are mostly believable and sympathetic; the tale is well told by Askaripour; and the prose is crisp.

I look forward to additional books from this author.

This book is categorized as satire and while there was some satire in it it was largely too real to be funny. It was a great read and highlighted some important issues particularly around race that I think need to be highlighted more. When I think of satire I think of grossly exaggerated and pushing the boundaries by making it absurd to get you to think, but everything that happened in this book I could see occurring. Darren “Buck” is a young black man working as a supervisor at Starbucks when an opportunity falls into his lap that leads him down the rabbit hole into the predominately white business world of New York. Faced with targeted hazing and with a burning desire to succeed he starts a journey that will keep you glued to the pages. I will admit this book had me laughing a few times (there’s a horrible running joke about all of the famous black people each new white person thinks looks just like Buck) and crying more than a couple. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for future books by Mateo Askaripour.

This is a quick, fast paced book that's just easy to enjoy. Darren aka Buck leads us on his journey of growth, discovery and turning into a top salesperson - as he also tells us tips on how we too can be the best salesperson ever. That sounds stuffy, but this book is a fun read with an interesting cast of characters. Darren was the valedictorian at a top high school, but he didn't go to college and instead is a bad-ass barista at Starbucks. Everyone who knows him - his mom and the people in his Bedstuy neighborhood thinks he can do better. One day, when he upsells one of his high powered customers who's so impressed he invites him to interview for a job.

The book is written like a memoir/ "self help" book with various tips for the reader - and it worked well to help us get a feel for Darren and his personality. I enjoyed the authors attention to detail of the characters - and if anything, it might have just been a bit too much crammed into this book, but I loved it overall and recommend this for anyone going through a reading slump, or that just needs a fun, easy read.

From the first page of Chapter 1, I knew this was going to be a compelling story. Narrated in the first person by Buck himself, Darren Vender, he tells his story of becoming a salesman and reaching his “full potential” as the only black salesman in the company. His story starts while he is working at Starbucks several years after he graduated as valedictorian of his class, unmotivated to pursue college. Once he is befriended by the head of a corporation to become a salesman, the story really takes off and, as in all good satires, just keeps going “off the rails”. Excellent read that kept my interest and went so many places: racism, stereotypes and more.

Outrageous, satirical, hilarious, provocative, farcical, mind-blowing, brilliant - this book looks to be the first huge hit of 2021. The premise is straight forward: a young Black man is plucked from his barista job at Starbucks to be groomed, trained, and set loose in the world of NYC sales. We encounter racist bosses, abusive training methods, questionable decisions, socioeconomic disparity, unequal friendships, white privilege, neighborhood gentrification, racial bias to the nth degree; in other words, ALL the problems in America today. Darren (aka Buck) is one of the most compelling characters I have ever encountered. As he tells his tale of how to succeed in sales, I found myself inspired, infuriated, perplexed, appalled, hopeful, you name it, with his behavior and actions. This book will turn your brain upside down, and could provide the best book club discussion of the year. In other words, do not miss reading this book.

Black Buck
By Mateo Askaripour

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

//Synopsis
Darren is twenty-two years old and perfectly content with his life working as a manager at a Starbucks, being able to hang out with this girlfriend, and living with his mom in their Bed-Stuy apartment. After Rhett Daniels, the CEO and founder of an NYC startup, spots something in Darren when getting his morning coffee, Darren starts down a path where he's called "Buck" and becomes a ruthless salesman. He changes into a person that his mother and oldest friends don't recognize, creating a schism between his past life and his new one. However, this path also leads to a chance for him to help other young people of color enter the whirlwind world of sales and success.

//Review
This book was truly a rollercoaster of a novel—in a good way. Buck was generally an unlikeable narrator for the first part of this book, but that was clearly intentional since it showed Buck's change, growth, and development over time. The book is written as a self-help/memoir that was geared toward teaching the reader how to be an effective salesperson. This format worked really well for me and this plot specifically because it allowed Buck to insert his own commentary and thoughts, which I think added a great element to the story. This narration also created a sense of foreboding throughout the book because you knew something was going to happen but you were not sure what it was or the nature of it. I feel like I spent the whole story waiting for the other shoe to drop and holding my breath. But all this did was keep me engaged and wanting to keep reading.

This story is plugged as a Wolf of Wall Street type story and satire, and for the first part of it, that's true. The workplace atmosphere that Rhett pulls Buck into very much screams the unbridled debauchery that that movie portrayed. However, even in the beginning during those scenes of heightened work-hard/play-hard mentality, the book's more serious themes still are prevalent. The issues and commentary of racism and racial tensions made me uncomfortable, agitated, and frustrated—and rightfully so. They all drew on today's realities and it's frighteningly not too far-fetched that those story lines and incidents could manifest in the real world, doubling the importance of the message and meaning of this book. This story packs a lot of punch into it and the ending really threw me (also in a good way)!

Thank you @netgalley @hmhbooks for this egalley in exchange for an honest review!

It’s been so hard for me to read this week because I’ve been actively trying to distract myself from obsessing over the election and state of the world while also playing myself and checking social media every 3.4 minutes. So I really wasn’t expecting to get any reading done this week and I was cool with that. But when I started reading this randomly on my commute to work and had a hard time putting it down amidst all of the foolishness, I knew it was🔥.

This book was engaging and suprisingly fun to read considering that it’s a satire focused on racism in startups. I really enjoyed @askmateo ‘s writing style and I was hooked from the beginning. I loved the characters, even when I wanted to slap some of them at times and while it’s different from the books I normally read, it’s a strong debut.

So I’m going to leave y’all with the synopsis and tell y’all to grab this when it comes out on January 5, 2021.

𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬:

There’s nothing like a black salesman on a mission.

An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor.

After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only black person in the company, reimagines himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.

#blackbuck

What. A. Trip.

Darren’s transformation into Buck takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions - from mildly uninterested to hating him to wanting him to succeed. He and the folks he surrounds himself with are all satirical depictions of societal archetypes. As a Latina in tech, some of these satirical points hit close to home and many were uncomfortable to sit through, BUT even in those uncomfortable moments, the driving force for Darren/Buck always seemed to be relatable (to an extent).

The layout of the book - sales 101 tips interwoven with the story - serves as an effective tool to keep the reader engaged with Buck’s reasoning. The chaotic pace helps make some of the wilder twists of the story seem almost organic (instead of straight up ridiculous).

Overall, Askaripour’s Black Buck is an interesting read. Def don’t go into the book with a closed mind or expecting a happy go-lucky trajectory.

This was such a thought-provoking read, and read in part like a memoir crossed with a self-help book for sales people. It is a huge commentary on racism, with some confronting situations for Buck, the only black employee at a tech startup. As the story progresses, we see how this affects Buck & what he does about it. Every character is unlikable for at least part of the story (some for all of it), but I think this was a story that had to have this.

I loved Black Buck. It was raw, original and honest. Honestly I could see it as a TV series. I felt it touches upon a lot of the issues BPIOC experience in the professional world and their personal life - feeling torn between two worlds. I did not expect that twist of an ending. I felt the characters were realistic and I think its a book that every teenager and adult should read. I hope Mateo keeps writing more books; we need his words.

This devastating dark satire of racism in tech startup culture grabs your attention and doesn't let go. Darren, a young black man working at Starbucks, is recruited into a cult-like workplace that challenges his identity and values. As the humiliations pile up, he seeks to find his own means of surviving and thriving in this all-white environment. Laser sharp humor, keen social insight, and mastery of dialogue make Askaripour a new author to watch.

The opening chapter of this extraordinary, satirical first novel is an author’s note penned by Darren, the protagonist. In it, he writes, “there is nothing like a Black salesman on a mission” and begins to tell the story of how he, as a directionless twentysomething living with his mother in Brooklyn and working in a midtown Starbucks, became that man. After being recruited as the only Black employee at Sumwun, a questionable start-up with a bizarre, cult-like atmosphere (replete with daily chanting), Darren is quickly christened Buck and absorbed into the increasingly high-pressure and often racist inner workings of the company. While he tries to square his growing discomfort in his new role in this strange, morally dubious workplace with the expectations of his family and friends, tragedy strikes, and Darren secretly begins a rival start-up focusing not only on training people of color to enter the white world of elite sales but also to revolutionize the industry. Askaripour has created a skillfully written, biting, witty, and absurdist novel that sheds light on racism, start-up culture, corporate morality, media bias, gentrification, and many other timely, important themes. Askaripour is an author to watch.

Really liked this one!! Black Buck is A debut novel that I’m so glad I had the chance to check out and I was impressed. This story line is interesting and well written. It's entertaining but also touches on some very relevant issues ongoing in today's society. I would definitely recommend this one to a friend.