Thursday, March 31

The Ivy Chronicles

How better to spend Spring Break than outdoors at a Santa Monica cafe sipping a Chai Tea Latte and reading the latest "guilty pleasure" novel? Even though the subject is one we've seen before, it's not one I'm tired of yet. Along the lines of The Nanny Diaries, this book also shows the ups of being the Manhattan elite and the downs of being employed by them. However, Karen Quinn infuses her own sense of humor making this a lighthearted and captivating beach read. The only complaint I have is that there are too many dated cultural references (i.e. Paris Hilton) making this book too "six months ago".



When turbocharged Park Avenue mom Ivy Ames finds she's been downsized from her high-powered 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. 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 reinvention and unexpected romance - for anyone who has ever lost what she holds dear and had to start over again.