Helpful Score: 6
from Amazon.com:
Karen Quinn's The Ivy Chronicles is the amusing story of what happens when a New Yorker loses her job, her husband, and her ritzy Park Avenue pad and is forced to carve out a new niche for herself and her two private school-educated daughters. After transferring the girls to public school and renting a shabby-chic (at best) flat upstairs from a knicherie, Ivy Ames takes her billionaire friend Faith's advice and starts a consulting business to help privileged pre-schoolers get into the city's premier kindergartens. Light on substance yet heavy on laughs, Quinn does a reasonably successful job of following in the well-heeled footsteps of earlier gossip lit standouts such as The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada.
Very cute - light, easy read!
Karen Quinn's The Ivy Chronicles is the amusing story of what happens when a New Yorker loses her job, her husband, and her ritzy Park Avenue pad and is forced to carve out a new niche for herself and her two private school-educated daughters. After transferring the girls to public school and renting a shabby-chic (at best) flat upstairs from a knicherie, Ivy Ames takes her billionaire friend Faith's advice and starts a consulting business to help privileged pre-schoolers get into the city's premier kindergartens. Light on substance yet heavy on laughs, Quinn does a reasonably successful job of following in the well-heeled footsteps of earlier gossip lit standouts such as The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada.
Very cute - light, easy read!
Helpful Score: 4
I really enjoyed this story. It was very funny and unexpected. It's a quick read that grabs you from page one and the laughs just keep going.
Helpful Score: 4
This book sat on my shelf for quite awhile before I decided to read it. I'm now wishing that I would have picked it up a long time ago. It was so very, very good! A very well-rounded book with something for everyone.
Great characters, it was funny, it was sad, it had romance and death. It had some shocking things ... it's amazing the lengths the parents went to get their kids into a "top-tier" private school. No matter how crazy the parents Quinn made it all believable, which could be because I've heard that NYC is cut-throat when it comes to gaining admission to exclusive private schools.
Great characters, it was funny, it was sad, it had romance and death. It had some shocking things ... it's amazing the lengths the parents went to get their kids into a "top-tier" private school. No matter how crazy the parents Quinn made it all believable, which could be because I've heard that NYC is cut-throat when it comes to gaining admission to exclusive private schools.
Helpful Score: 4
Fluff- but fun fluff. Great for a plane ride, rainy day or when you want to zone out and realize how ridiculous rich people in NYC can be.
Helpful Score: 3
This is a very amusing look at private kindergarten admissions in NYC. The characters are smartly written. This is a fun summer read!
Helpful Score: 2
Quick, entertaining read. Some of the subplots are a little unbelieveable, but overall I enjoyed the book!
Helpful Score: 1
Pretty fluffy stuff - a definite beach or airplane read - not particularly well-written but a page-turner anyway.
Helpful Score: 1
An easy read, and both a funny and sad glimpse into a world I hope to never inhabit. My biggest problem with the book was that I just had trouble getting into the characters. I really wanted to like Ivy, but she was so superficial that I just had trouble rooting for her at times. I wished she was just a little more likable.
Helpful Score: 1
This book picks up where Nanny Diaries left off.
Fun read about monied or poor families in NY and the craziness that surrounds getting your child into the "right" school.
Very good book.....easy read
If you enjoyed the Nanny Diaries you'll love this novel. I was completely enthralled with the riches to rags story and how you really get a glimpse into the life of preschool entrance exams among the rich. I guess it's true you really will do ANYTHING for your children.
HILARIOUS !!! How much truth is in this ?? No idea, but hilarious nonetheless.
very cute story, and an easy read.
Great Read about High Society (School Admissions) Life.
Ivy Ames loves her job, goes home early, hoping to get a hug from her husband (who has been out of work himself for 8 months) and finds him in the tub with a co-workers husband. She kicks him out and then has to re-think her entire life. The gorgeous apartment goes, the nanny goes, the dog walker goes. She gets an idea from a friend and begins to help people with getting their children - YOUNG children - into exclusive private schools. In doing so, she ends up finding herself.
Love this book. It is light, amusing reading.
This was a fun read.
a really FAST read about a park ave mother who loses her job and husband in the first few pages and spend the rest of the book trying to reconcile her concience, jewish morals and being a single mother with her desire to return to her previously affluent state of existance. An enjoyable read.
Loved this book. The end of the book is funny and touching. It's a great read.
Quite intriguing read. I cannot imagine having this much money and having such screwed priorities, but apparently this really can be true of people in this tier of income.
Couldn't put it down!
I laughed out loud. Cute book.
Hysterical look into the wacky world of crazed, wealthy New Yorkers who are trying to get their kids into the best kindergartens.
A fabulously original and legitimate premise with a bit too much chick-lit-like romance.
Great book a la "The Nanny Diaries," but better.
Fun book !!! Hard to believe that this was based on a true story and hard to believe that there are people in the world like this !!! Hilarious
A fun one - light and a happy ending! A funny look into the nonsense of getting children into the best kindergartens of Manhattan. I also really love this reader, Julia Gibson. She's always good and easy to listen to. I'd recommend this one!
fantastic!!!
Really cute read. I really enjoyed it
Very cute story of a Park Avenue women losing her status and husband in the same day. She leaves the Park Avenue lifestyle and begins a new career as a consultant to parents trying to get their 4-year olds into exclusive New York private schools. Chick lit, so don't expect too much!
A funny novel, but not very profound. An entertaining read otherwise
Not my kind of book. Way too much fluff.
The Ivy Chronicles is a laugh-out loud story about the cutthroat and corrupt kindergarten private school admission process in New York City, specifically, Manhattan. These wealthy and eclectic parents will stop at nothing to get their little darlings admitted to the top tier kindergartens known as the Little Ivies. Karen Quinn actually navigated these waters and her accounting of the ups and downs are positively hysterical. I haven't laughed this much in ages!
A quick, enjoyable read.
When turbocharged Park Avenue mom Ivy Ames finds she's been downsized from her highpowered corporate job and her marriage, she swiftly realizes that she's going to need a whole new way to support herself and her two private school daughters. At first she does the obvious thing: she panics. Then she decides to put her years of marketing savvy to work and dreams up a brilliant new business-helping upscale New Yorkers get their little darlings into the most exclusive kindergartens in the city.
Ivy enters a parent-eat-parent world where the egos are directly proportional to their owners' enormous incomes, peopled by her only-in-Manhattan clients, including:
Lilith Radmore-Stein, a newspapre mogul who is willing to risk her entire empire in a demented effort to get her son admitted to Harvard Day
Omar Kuthcer ("Kuthcer the Butcher") a cold-blooded mob boss who seeks Ivy's counsel on whether to bump off or pat off the powers-that-be to get his "little pistol" into the city's best all-girl catholic school
Stu Needleman, Ivy's most obnoxious client, who threatens to ruin her if she won't help his four-year-old unibrowed daughter cheat on her kindergarten exam
Willow Bliss and Tina Herrera, the biracial lesbian parents of an adopted wheelchair-bound black child who is the "triple crown of diversity" that every school will covet
From the backstabbers of corporate America to the leading toddlers of Fifth Avenue, The Ivy Chronicles is more than an insider's look at this elite and utterly preposterous universe. It is also a tale of midlife re-invention and unexpected romance-for anyone who has ever lost what she holds dear and had to start over again.
Ivy enters a parent-eat-parent world where the egos are directly proportional to their owners' enormous incomes, peopled by her only-in-Manhattan clients, including:
Lilith Radmore-Stein, a newspapre mogul who is willing to risk her entire empire in a demented effort to get her son admitted to Harvard Day
Omar Kuthcer ("Kuthcer the Butcher") a cold-blooded mob boss who seeks Ivy's counsel on whether to bump off or pat off the powers-that-be to get his "little pistol" into the city's best all-girl catholic school
Stu Needleman, Ivy's most obnoxious client, who threatens to ruin her if she won't help his four-year-old unibrowed daughter cheat on her kindergarten exam
Willow Bliss and Tina Herrera, the biracial lesbian parents of an adopted wheelchair-bound black child who is the "triple crown of diversity" that every school will covet
From the backstabbers of corporate America to the leading toddlers of Fifth Avenue, The Ivy Chronicles is more than an insider's look at this elite and utterly preposterous universe. It is also a tale of midlife re-invention and unexpected romance-for anyone who has ever lost what she holds dear and had to start over again.
