The Witch of Wall Street

I loved how fearless Hetty Green was. Going head-to-head with the male titans of finance, she navigated a male-dominated field and beat them at their own game, especially when the market panicked and everyone else lost their nerve. Marie Benedict also captures the greed of the powerful men around her and shows how Hetty weathered the malicious rumors the press spread about her. Watching her refuse to be shaken by it all made her story impossible to put down.

What impressed me most was how real Hetty felt as a character. Benedict gives us a truly three-dimensional woman: a fierce competitor, but also a loving mother and wife. She is the mother who teaches her son to make his own decisions, just as her father taught her, and the wife who isn't afraid to stand up to her husband.

We also see her as a loyal friend and a philanthropist, adding depth to a woman's history so often reduced to a cold caricature. Running through it all is the book's central question of what the pursuit of wealth really costs, and Benedict handles it thoughtfully.

I thought some parts of the story were slow, but they didn't take away from my overall enjoyment and also established Hetty as a real, relatable, and powerful woman in her own right. This is a fantastic story about an amazing woman, and I strongly recommend it to fans of historical fiction and stories about women who overcame challenges.