Oh my gosh this book was amazing! Morally gray characters, plot twists and turns, betrayals, hang on to your hats, wild ride! I enjoyed this book and demolished it quickly. I have a business background, so understanding some of the terms helped, but I can see how the industry language might turn others off.

That is the beauty of reading this on the kindle though! You can define and search terms you don't understand at a blink of an eye. I will be recommending this work to my readers and am excited for the next Gowani work.

Thank you for the opportunity to preview Leverage. This is a financial thriller that is well written and has the mathematical properties to keep you interested.
This book does go into the weeds a bit so you might want to read it more closely to get the full power of the book.
Good characters and a steady plot.
3 stars

I picked up Leverage after seeing a lot of enthusiastic reviews, even though it’s not usually the kind of book I’m drawn to. I was curious to give it a try, but ultimately, it confirmed that this genre just isn’t for me. The world of hedge funds, high-stakes deals, and corporate power games is well-crafted and clearly drawn from deep knowledge. For readers who enjoy intense financial thrillers and morally complex characters, there’s definitely a lot to sink into. But personally, I found the pacing a bit uneven, and at times the story felt slow or hard to connect with. That said, I can appreciate what the author was doing, and it’s easy to see why it works for many others. While Leverage didn’t quite land for me, fans of high-finance drama and psychological tension may find it far more compelling.
Thanks to Netgalley and the author, and the publishing house for giving me the chance to read this book in advance.

Leverage by Amran Gowani is interesting. AL Jafa works as a manager of a hedge fund which overnight loses over $300 million. His boss gives him 3 months to make it back or he would report him to the SEC. He ends up joining a secret group that makes money for the members. This book is a dark comedy in the first person. It is not a subject I know much about – I am sure it was for me – a lot of profanity which might or might not have been necessary.
The writing was good – the subject matter—high finance was a little confusing. If you enjoy high stake money storytelling—this will be good for you.

This book is so out of my wheelhouse but was enjoyably intense and well written. It has dark moments and could be triggering for some but overall it's a very good book.
Thank you NetGalley and Atria Marketing for early access!

Leverage by Amran Gowani is a fast paced, gripping debut that pulled me in from the very first page. I haven't read many books set in the cutthroat world of hedge funds, and Gowani absolutely nails it. He delivers a thrilling, darkly funny story that's sharp, timely, and impossible to put down.

We follow Al, a Pakistani American rising star at Prism Capital, a hedge fund filled with some of the most toxic coworkers imaginable. After a catastrophic $300 million loss, Al is given an ultimatum: either recover the money or become the scapegoat in an insider trading scandal. What unfolds is a rollercoaster through betrayal, greed, ambition, and the heavy toll it all takes on a person's mental health.

Thematically, this book cuts deep, examining race, power, and capitalism's insatiable appetite through a lens that's witty, raw, and brutally honest. It's a very timely book for the world we live in now. Al's narration is filled with humor, cultural references, and a vulnerability that makes you root for him, even when his choices get murky. If you love HBO's Succession and Industry, you will absolutely devour this one.

I especially appreciated how Gowani wove in the impact of systemic injustice and the mental health struggles that come with trying to survive in a world built to tear you down. I do recommend checking content warnings, especially for depictions of suicidal ideation, but if you’re looking for a smart, thought provoking thriller, Leverage needs to be on your radar.

Thank you to NetGalley, Amran Gowani, and Atria Books for the eARC of this book.

It was entertaining and interesting especially in light of what’s happening in the real world. The writing was good and I can’t wait to see what he writes next

The main character, a man of color, working at a hedge fund finds himself in trouble in this thriller set in the world of high finance/hedge funds. He inadvertently loses a huge amount of company money and he given an offer, replace the losses or find himself in jail based on false insider trading charges. Main character, has a sarcastic sense of humor and lots of observations about the world he is in, in particular the white male dominated hedge fund. Twisty and fast moving and learned a few things about that world.

I was invited by the publisher to review to this book. Al works at a hedge fund founded by the wealthy and politically connected. When his investment fails, he loses $300 million in an instant. Assuming he will get fired by the founder, he learns instead that he must earn the money back in three months or be the fall man for the government's investigation into insider-trading.

This was a fast-paced book with a lot of interesting content. There was also humor in this book, which balanced out the darker elements. The author also made this book accessible, as he opens up a window into trading that the public rarely sees; the reader actually feels the tension in the writing. This was not a book I would have normally picked up for myself, but I am very glad I read it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Entertaining account of a nightmare job in the financial markets. I recommend it for anyone who likes thrillers set in the financial world and isn’t bothered by an obnoxious white male cultural setting or frequent suicide references. The story is fast-paced and well-written.

This is the authors debut Novel
It’s about an investment broker AL that looses a lot of money and Paul the boss is not happy
Al takes things into his own hands and eventually gets revenge

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for trusting me with an ARC of Leverage by Amran Gowani. This book is the first book by this author and, I hope, will not be his last. This book tells the story of Ali Jafar, a manager at a hedge fund, who has just lost $300 million on an investment. Rather than fire him, his boss and owner of the fund, Paul, threatens him with insider trading (false) and gives him a few months to make up the loss. A college friend, Damon, gives him a "tip" to help replace some of the loss and also gives him a contact who can give him more insider information.

This book is a page-turner filled with plenty of twists and turns especially if you can keep up with the financial lingo. Clearly, Mr. Gowani has a lot of experience in the hedge fund field making this book very realistic. I highly recommend and look forward to more from this author.

In the meantime, keep turning those pages....

I received a free copy of, Leverage, by Amran Gowani, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Al Jafar works in hedge funds, he loses big time millions of dollars, his boss gives him a deal, get his money back or get out. This was an interesting read.

This book isn't in my normal wheelhouse but I really enjoyed it. Full of twists, turns and backstabbing it makes for a wild ride. I would definitely read more books like this in the future.

Thanks to Atria books for providing this ARC, all opinions are my own.

Finance is not a world that plays host to enough thrillers in my opinion, given the high stakes of the industry. Leverage is an excellent example of the sort of book I'd like to see more of.
Complete with an immoral protagonist still trying to do the right thing, a fast pace, and a dark humour, this novel delivers.

The marginalized identity of the narrator in combination with the cut-throat world of hedge funds makes for an interesting balance. I also really enjoyed the cast of reprehensible side characters and specific song references.

I have two advanced degrees and the accounting and financial details of this book were beyond me. If you are not a very savvy investor with extensive stock market experience this novel will put you to sleep. I doubt very much many of the manipulations described are realistic possibilities. I had sensory overload after eight chapters. I doubt very much there are many readers eager to buy this novel.

The concept of this novel is so completely out of my wheelhouse, I didn’t know what to expect when I started it. The story follows a hedge funder who loses $300 million for his company and is given the option of getting the money back or taking the fall for the insider-trading the company is definitely participating in. Said hedge funder, Al, is the only brown guy working at his very white firm and is constantly having to swallow racist behaviors from his colleagues and bosses. The novel is 100% a thriller, with Al navigating all kinds of situations to try to find a way out of his impossible situation. This was a tense read! I was stressed out. And while I don’t typically read books, either fiction or non-fiction, based in the financial world, I thought this was really well done. It’s funny and satirical on top of all of the intensity, and has a lot to say about race and class and mental health.

Synopsis: Ali Jafar has been a high flyer at his hedge fund, Prism Capital, but when an unexpected riot sends one of his major investments into a free fall, losing millions virtually overnight, Jafar is sure that he will be fired. His boss has other ideas: find a way to generate three hundred million in three months or go to prison for insider trading. In his quest to appease his boss, Jafar gets exposed to new depths of depravity and criminality. Hemmed in from all sides, can Jafar use this knowledge to leverage a solution?

Review: In the vein of Paul Beatty’s or Percival Everett’s satirical works, Gowani’s LEVERAGE savages America’s capital systems and social hierarchies. I’m not going to lie: initially, this book wasn’t working for me at all. I’m not a huge satire fan, and the narrator’s exhausting rage and depression as well as the other characters’ extreme loathsomeness alienated me. BUT, books like this are why I never DNF!! By the end of the book, I really appreciated Gowani’s skill and humor in portraying America’s dark underbelly. Additionally, this short novel moves at breakneck speed with action elements similar to the Bond or Mission Impossible franchises. Note to screenwriters: this book is tailor made for adaptation.

If you’ve ever suspected the systems are rigged against you, then don’t pass on getting LEVERAGE.

This one was a fast paced book that really did bring you into the world of the stock market and what happens when someone has way too much power to try to control it. I read this one during a volatile part of our stock market history and it really did drive the points of the book.

Dark at times with some hints of real life events that could happen to stock market traders. Themes for suicide, racism and just all out narcissistic traits in some of the the characters.

Leverage takes a look at the world of stock trading and turned it into a very interesting and chilling thriller. the book is fewer than 300 pages and a first novel for Amran Gowani. It was actually a book that did provoke emotions at the main character's frustration. The cat and mouse game at the end tipped the point to a four star read for me.

The book was very readable and in many ways very believable. Thank you to the author and #NetGalley for the ARC. I can see this one making it to a made for TV show.

The provided interesting insight into an industry, which I think, should be outlawed. The protagonist is blackmailed into performing patently illegal financial dealing to avoid being accused of illegal trading he didn’t do. The author used colleague interaction to show how ongoing discrimination still percolates under the surface. The author is a good storyteller who moves the involved plot along at a good paces. For readers interested in mysteries intertwined with business deals, I recommend this book.