What a brilliant and bold tale of a woman in a man's world. Wise, fearless and smart, this is more than a love story, but a journey of self discovery and how to take the lead in your own life. Heartbreakingly relevant and incredibly timely, it looks at our need for human connection, and all the positives a religion can offer but without the deity. Utterly perfect.

I really enjoyed The Startup Wife and the insight into the tech world! I loved that Asha was the technical brains behind the WAI as it was great to read about a woman in a STEM industry. The relationship between Cyrus and Asha was complex with the mixing of home life and business. It definitely left me thinking a lot after finishing about women's roles in business and how the media portrays their work compared to men's.

I loved how Tahmima Anam brought in the coronavirus pandemic in the final part of the novel and it really helped build up the suspense for the ending.

Thank you to NetGalley and Canongate for an ARC in exchange for a review.

Unfortunately I was really disappointed by this book. At the beginning I loved it, it follows asha, an intelligent, brave, strong woman who is making her dreams come true. She marries the man she has a crush on since school and along with his best friend they create a start up.

However, the book quickly went downhill when I realised this is not a book about a powerful woman, rather her manipulating bully of a husband Cyrus. It really made me sad that asha went along with whatever Cyrus wanted eventhough she knew it was morally wrong, she refused the voice her opinion in fear of an argument which led to serious consequences.

I absolutely loved this novel - funny, feminist and highly engaged with the world of today. I didn’t know much about the start-up world but this reads as painfully realistic so I wasn’t surprised to find the author has herself sat on the board of a start-up for the last decade. The growth of WAI from kitchen table idea to the dominant social media platform of the day is really well realised and you really go along with the characters on the journey of watching it snowball into something far behind what they imagined. A perfect novel for the current times and highly recommended, thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

My goodness! First of all, thank you so much Canongate for granting me access to this novel. I went into it a little blind, didn't read the full blurb. I was intrigued by the fact that there was a woman in STEM in it and that fit a prompt in my reading challenge.

I wasn't expecting to be so impressed with the writing in this and the story itself. I'm not going to give spoilers, you can always read the blurb if you want to know what the book is about..

Here's what I love about The Startup Wife, it transported me into the tech world, I got a very intimate fly-on-the-wall experience about how ideas are grown into these apps and technological concepts that help our everyday lives. I love the treatment of marriage, especially between two people who work together. The character development in this novel is also very fascinating to me, while I wanted to root for one character, I understood while the other was acting the way they were.

In summary, The Startup Wife is a love story you're not expecting but will enjoy either way.

The startup wife is a clever, funny subtle novel about love, ambition and meaning. It is incredibly intelligent and poignant. Highly recommend!

Everything in this book felt like it was at a surface level - character development, relationships, tech start up life. Nothing felt deep enough to connect to or learn from really. There were definitely snippets of white privilege and the differences experienced for brown women in business, but it was purely a glimpse. It would've been nice if the author explored this further. Otherwise it was a very okay nice read.

A refreshing modern read. I loved the concept of The Startup Wife.
The books follows Asha, a talented Asian-American code writer, and her two business partners Cyrus and Jules as they launch their new social media platform, designed to offer the public personalised rituals that are suited to their lifestyles and beliefs. Based at Utopia, a hub for transformative initiatives, from healthy cigarettes to “consent to touch” apps, at what point should the imaginable stay imaginary?
I adored that this book addressed the role of women within the workplace, women in STEM, women as leaders, husband and wife dynamics and male privilege. I longed for Asha to be the powerful successful female pioneer and I loathed those that got in the way. The Startup wife was an easy read, with a unique and refreshing plot. Great read to take on holiday.

I work in tech, and books are my way of escaping that world for a short while every day. So The Startup Wife seemed like the last thing I'd want to read. But my curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to see if the hype was justified.

Asha is a computer programmer, studying for a PhD at MIT. She's intelligent and hard-working, eager to make her immigrant parents proud. One day Cyrus, her high school crush, comes back into her life. He has always been an enigmatic figure, operating on a different wavelength to everybody else. Along with his wealthy friend Jules, he encourages Asha to create a new algorithm, one which takes the hobbies & interests of users and turns them into a ritual. Before long they have developed this idea into a social media platform, and a highly successful one at that. Asha sees her feelings for Cyrus reciprocated and they marry. Their app is more of a triumph than they could ever have imagined, but the whole thing quickly becomes overwhelming, and cracks start to appear in their relationship.

I understand that the aim of the book is to satirize tech culture and to show up social media for all of its ridiculousness. However, the story is straining so hard to be topical that it forgets to make its characters compelling. I feel like I have come across Cyrus many times before, the guru with all the answers, who becomes corrupted by power. The plot follows a very predictable path - it held no surprises for me. I suppose it does have some interesting things to say about marriage, and the way that success can transform it. But overall, I expected a great level of insight from this novel instead of a well-worn, formulaic story.

This rollercoaster of a book begins with computer scientist Asha Ray and her friend Jules pitching their concept for a new social media platform to Utopia, a cutting-edge business incubator in downtown NYC. Their platform is loosely based on her PhD research, expanded by her enigmatic and charismatic husband Cyrus’ interest in a replacement for organised religion. The site creates new rituals for people based on their own beliefs and experiences – generating an appropriately alternative take on a marriage, or a funeral for a pet, or whatever ritual was requested – which can then be shared with others with similar passions. Though that concept might sound interesting enough on its own, it’s the relationships and challenges faced by the trio that make this book such a hit: questions like choosing business over academia, working with friends and partners, and surviving the media whirlwind that accompanies stratospheric success. It’s perfect reading for those involved in start-up life, or anyone who works alongside loved ones.

As featured in February issue of Cambridge Edition Magazine

Couple get married after a very short time and then start a company. He was a high school god - turns out he is actually a bit of a twit. There is a moral here - that guy you thought was fabulous when you were 16, probably a bit of a twit when you are older.

I have thought for a while before writing a review for this book - it was all perfectly serviceable but I left it with a 'well yes, and' feeling. I suspect that if you read this and you are under 25 then the whole tech start up company vibe will mean more to you, plus the idea that the perfect chap when you were 16 could still be the same amazing person may still be valid. But as a gnarled old woman who saw and experienced hanging onto 'start up' relationships way beyond their finish date, the writing was on the wall, and firmly on the page, for the main characters right from the start.

There are clever moments - I liked the hothouse business idea, the accompanying cast, the weaving in of Covid and Asha's struggle between her conscience and marital love, but I am not sure they outweigh my feelings of 'leave him; which started from about page 5.

The Startup Wife is a thing of beauty. Modern, funny and at times chilling, it is an exploration of what happens when all of your worlds collide. Love, ambition and aspiration come together in this captivating story of one woman who builds a platform that will change the world, alongside her husband and her closest friend, and they are all forced to come to terms with the power of their choices. I absolutely loved the final climax, Anam has written something amazing that everybody should read.

I've had to sit on this one for a while and I'm still not entirely sure what to rate it or think of it.

First the book was very engaging. I started the book with a black mirror vibe, lost it again and then kind of regained it in maybe the last quarter. Humans relationship with technology is something that fascinates me and thus us essentially what the book is about and all the hipster tech company stuff was hilarious and enjoyable to read about.

I also enjoyed Asha as a character. She's funny and spirited and knows her own mind whilst making many of the mistakes that I'm sure we all make in relationships and at work. I also enjoyed Destiny and Asha's family a fair bit... And pretty much hated everyone else but in the books defense I think you are supposed to at least a little bit.

So my largest problem with the book is pacing. Months fly past in a page and then the scenes that get the most "screen time" sometimes felt baffling. I was never really quite sure what story was being told. There was a black mirror episode similar to something that happens in here - won't say which one because spoilers - but the whole of what is dealt with in a hour of television takes place in about a fifth of this book and kind of boils down to "This seems a bad idea. See told you." The plot serves to emphasize the rift setting in between Asha and Cyrus but maybe it feels like there could have been a more organic way to tell that story?

I think the ultimate point of this story is the feminist reading of it but then there were points that made that message feel muddled like smacking in bloody covid in the literal last paragraph that made me just focus on that insteafd of the intended message.

Overall it was an absorbing read with a lot of good stuff in it. But the meandering plot and odd pacing just stopped me from loving it.

Hugely enjoyable mix of tech satire and a study of the career trajectory / sacrifices a woman can make in the tech industry. My understanding - and for that matter interest in - of this world is pretty minimal, but i was fully absorbed, whilst also quietly repelled and bemused at both the technological concept that’s designed and the public appetite for it....
for me the most satisfying component was Asha herself, an American with Bangladeshi heritage, balancing career and family (you can have it all as the start up wife!) and the reality of the sacrifices of family time, relationships,, friendships and sense of self when operating in a predominantly male environment. This sounds worthy, it’s absolutely not. - it’s a witty, emotionally engaging narrative.

I understand this is a bit of a diversion from Anam’s previous works, but I’ll be looking to check them out on the strength of this.

Tahmima Anam was one of the 20 Granta Best of Young British Novelists list 2013, following the publication of the first two parts of her Bengal Trilogy, which chronicled three generations of a family through the Bangladesh war of independence to the present.

But when she announced her latest novel, Startup Wife, she commented that she wanted to move away from feeling the obligation to tell Bangladesh’s history and that she was “wanted there to be more lightness. More of a sense of possibility”, describing the new novel as the “feminist rom-com I've been waiting my whole life to write - a story about love, invention, and feminist geekdom.” She even submitted the book to publisher’s under a pseudonym, presumably to avoid the ‘but this isn’t the sort of book you write’ push back.

And The Startup Wife is indeed a very different type of novel, one that I can imagine as a movie, and, I have to say up front, not really my type of book (or film).

It is narrated by Asha Ray, an expert program, who both marries and founds a tech start-up with Cyrus Jones, her high-school crush and now something of a non-religious guru, together with Jules, a friend of Cyrus’s. The start-up centres around an app that essentially uses Asha’s AI algorithms and Cyrus’s wide knowledge to recreate tailored pseudo-religious rituals for those not attracted to organised religion.

Large parts of the story are a gentle satire of tech-world, with people eating “fermented rhubarb chia puddings” and that like, and initially everything in both Asha’s personal and business life goes very well. When she tells herself, halfway through the novel that:

"I’m going to write a marriage guide, I think. I’ll call it The Startup Wife: How to Succeed in Business and Marriage at the Same Time. I’ll tell everyone how great it is to mix everything together—work, love, ambition, sex. Anyone who says business and pleasure doesn’t mix is an idiot. I can see it in Barnes & Noble, propped up on a table between How to Stay Married and Startups for Dummies."

it is rather inevitable that both parts of her life will unwind, in both cases due to much of the attention on the business, from press, customers and investors, focusing on Cyrus not Asha, and him making increasingly hubristic decisions as a result.

Another element of the novel, as the author explained in interviews, is to expose tech culture:

"People in start-ups talk about disrupting things. They want to disrupt everything, but what they don't disrupt are the fundamental structures of power. They don’t disrupt gender power, and they definitely don’t disrupt class. They maintain and fuel and perpetuate the systems of oppression that we have been living with for centuries, but they just disguise it as the new."

And as Asha observes when they visit silicon valley (the start-up is actually based in a New York incubator, giving her some critical distance from the wider sector):

"Other things we don’t like: the sanctimonious way they talk about how much of their money they give away. Their insistence that they are on the right side of politics, even if they support The Terrible One, because what they are doing—upending the order of things—is, by its very nature, progressive. Change is everything. If you help people change the way they order their pizza or the way they pay their bills or the way they lose weight, you must be doing some good in the world. For that, you deserve money, and lower taxes, and even a wife with a better ass."

My issue with the novel is that the rom-com part is rather that, and the exposure of tech culture doesn’t really say anything terribly insightful or new.

That said, there were two aspects of the novel I did enjoy.

Firstly I was delighted to see the narrator and his wife bonding over, amongst other things: we read the same book, a Korean novel about a woman whose family freaks out when she stops eating meat, and then we talked about meat, and about Korea, and about our families. A reference of course to Deborah Smith’s translation, The Vegetarian, of 채식주의 자 by 한강, which won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. And who was on the jury that awarded the prize? Tahmima Anam.

Secondly, I was impressed with the way that the early stages of the Covid-19 epidemic were integrated seamlessly into the story, given the novel was originally developed prior to the crisis - indeed it was done so well, making the gradual emergence of a potentially apocalyptic epidemic and its consequent effect on both social greeting and death rituals key to the plot, that I am left wondering how the story would otherwise have progressed.

Overall, a quick and enjoyable read albeit not one I found that profound.

Thanks to the published via Netgalley for the ARC.

This book went on my radar as part of a “ones to watch for 2021” by stylist magazine.
A great premise. A young couple have aspirations to build a new kind of social network. She is the technical brains, the coding behind the algorithm and he is the ideas man. The one that wants to bring people together through shared beliefs and ideas. Together with a friend the launch WAI.
An exploration into starting a new venture as part of a couple. The stress and strain it places on a marriage. Also an exploration of what it means to be a woman, snd in this case a woman of colour, in this environment where white males dominate. And finally a view of the responsibilities of tech companies to their users.
Really engaging, a LOT to make you think. A good solid read.

The Startup Wife is a novel about big tech, dreams, and the reality that follows, as a tech startup becomes something more than its co-founder imagined. Whilst working on her PhD, Asha reconnects with her high school crush, Cyrus, and they fall into a whirlwind romance. Newly married, they and their friend Jules come up with an idea for a social network based around Cyrus' ability to get to the bottom of what rituals individuals crave in their lives, tailored to their interests. As Asha codes the algorithm for this alternative to religion, Cyrus' charisma makes him the face of the platform, and soon they're the tech ones to watch out for. As popularity grows, Asha starts to feel like Cyrus—and men with money—are making the decisions, and when a big change is decided against her will, their platform might not be the same again.

I was drawn to this novel by the premise, and particularly by the look at a female programmer and co-founder in the tech startup world. A lot of the narrative is focused around the building of the company and the challenges as it becomes successful, and how Asha and Cyrus' relationship works in the background, and then near the end the main narrative tension happens, after some foreshadowing comments earlier. This means it can feel a little slow at times, and possibly more so for people who don't enjoy the side helping of startup/hipster satire, but Asha is a gripping main character, and there's some vivid supporting characters too.

The big tension later in the narrative (without wanting to give spoilers, though this might make it guessable so you might want to skip this paragraph if you're worried) is very similar to an episode of Black Mirror, which seems to possibly be alluded to in the novel. Though it works in the story, after the build up it was a bit disappointing for the conflict (and inevitable backfire) to be something already in a TV show, especially as the platform itself is a clever way of imagining new technology and also building a story around a character who has to play a central part in it. The narrative also has a subplot around the apocalypse, with a tech incubator that has a survivalist focus coming into play as the novel ends with the start of the pandemic, which felt like a fitting note if a bit weird given we're still very much living through it.

I enjoyed The Startup Wife, particularly Asha and what happens as she realises she isn't being given enough credit for her role in basically creating the platform. At times it felt quite a bit like The Social Network meets Black Mirror, but as I like both of those, and it also comes with a sharp look at the treatment of women in the tech industry, this wasn't a bad thing. It's a very modern novel and one that does benefit from an awareness of big tech/issues around social media platforms to some extent, but is also generally enjoyable as a story of what happens when you build a business and a marriage at once.

From the striking cover to the ultra modern content, I really enjoyed this book - though I did feel very old fashioned and not up to speed reading it, surrounded by app designers and coding wizards in the book.

Asha has always known she's destined for great things in coding and developing modules that will change the AI world. When she meets and falls in love with an old high school friend who is a charismatic genius in designing personalised meaningful rituals, her life path suddenly changes as they work together on an app to meet the gap that religion no longer fills. The story follows Asha, Cyrus and their friend Jules through the start-up world and how extreme work pressures affects personal relationships despite the best of intentions.

It was a fantastic insight into a world I will never experience, well written and captivating.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read it.

Lots of buzz about this book but it's not for me. Firstly, it's very different from Anam's 'The Bones of Grace|' which I totally loved. This feels more like a fable which tries to merge contemporary concerns about tech/social media with an artificial feminist-y add-on. There's in-your-face satire of hipster-ness ('we get three coffee hemp mylkshakes with extra CBD shots') and the whole direction of the tale is pretty clear from early in.

I've read the tech USP somewhere else - or is in from a film? The potential for it to go off the rails is clear, so it's hard to buy in to the fact that the main characters can't see that. And the tacked on Covid ending which may be the apocalypse...? Just not my style of read, I'm afraid.