Ugh. This book was terrible. ( )

Oh my gosh, is this really what New Yorkers go through to get their kids into a decent school?
A woman, Ivy, is screwed out of her job, finds her unemployed husband naked with her now ex-boss's wife and this is on Park Avenue in NY.
Ivy must cut costs and make a new life.
She does so by becoming a preschool advisor for parents, because everyone in NY knows if their child doesn't get into a top tier preschool, they won't go to an ivy league college.
A good beach read. ( )

Okay, wow, can one woman be so self-absorbed and in complete denial of what life is really like? I don't think I can say it any better than this reviewer on amazon.com: While the premise of the book was intriguing (an insider's view into the cut-throat world of the Manhattan elite), my antipathy for Ivy overroad any hopes of my giving this book a good review. She continually baffled me with her amoral stance and her ability to turn everything into a one-woman whine-fest. There was almost no one to cheer for, save some of the stereotypical "underclass" children.

She gets fired by the butthead husband of the woman who is sleeping with her husband and all she can worry about is that her psychic said she was about to get hit by a bus - metaphorically or not, she wasn't really sure.

Usually I can get a giggle out of books like this - but listening to her whine about money and then spend $1500 on a fish surgery so her daughter's fish wouldn't have it's boyancey problem.

I'm at the end of disc one now and I won't be listening to the rest. What trash. How self-absorbed and utterly useless.

( )

This was a pretty good book. It was yet another book that I had never heard of before spotting it on the bookshelf at the local library. It was quite a bit better than many of the books I find that way, and many that I've heard of beforehand.

The characters are interesting, though many aren't sympathetic. Of course, I don't think that they're supposed to be considered sympathetic, since this book is clearly pointing out the spoiled nature of the private school system and what a life of privilege is like in New York City. Most of the characters that I was turned off by when they were introduced turned out to be the schmucks that my gut had been telling me they were.

There were times when unimportant parts of the book seemed to drag on, but there were also times when it seemed like some (more important) things were just skipped over completely. I guess that inconsistency is part of why I didn't give this book more stars. It was a bit of a sloppy story, which is something that I don't enjoy.

The best way to describe this story is that it is basically a grown-up Clueless, moved to the Upper East Side from Beverly Hills, and dealing with spoiled socialites (and wannabe socialites) getting their kids into private school school to gain the approval of their peers, as opposed to socialites in the making trying to gain the approval of their peers at their high school. The same conniving and petty crap that you would expect from high school students is exhibited in so many of the characters. Most, if not all, of the characters are willing to sacrifice any sense of morals to get ahead. While that made some of it humorous, it also made it a bit disturbing.

If you enjoy random chick lit, you will probably enjoy this book. It's also possible that if you like stories about sociopaths, you will enjoy this book. ( )

A great read. You really feel for the main character as she grows, struggles, succeeds, and fails, ( )