The Ivies
Alexa Donne (Crown Books for Young Readers, 2021)
Via: Library
Genre: YA/Fiction/Dark Academia
Pages: 309 (Print)
Ever want to just smack an entire cast of characters? That’s what we felt like after 309 pages of The Ivies.
Eau de Skunk
Now, The Ivies is the kinda book that’s gonna nab rave reviews all over the place. Not here, Toots. We don’t do that gob-smacked slobber stuff over a book that smells like Eau de Skunk. Walks and talks like it, too.
We’re just funny that way. Like:
The Basics
The Ivies is a group of high school girls who specialize in sabotaging others in order to get into Ivy League schools. They are: Avery the ring leader and Margot, Sierra, Emma, and Olivia. All of them are uber rich. Except Olivia. She’s going to Claflin Academy on a scholarship.
These girls give pit vipers a bad name. They’re vicious. Ruthless. Vindictive. They’d sell their own grandmother – or test scores – if it meant admission to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. There’s plenty of betraying, cheating, scheming, conniving, and back-stabbing, too. No one is who they seem to be. Everyone’s lying.
One of them winds up dead.
Kimber: This book has 32 chapters. Mom and I had the killer pegged by chapter 13. The rest was pretty much just one giant run-on sentence. Or endless chapters of As The Stomach Turns. Only without the scenery.
Wake me when it’s over.
The Writing
The writing – if ya can call it that – is so over the top. It’s also cliched. Cynical, jaded. If we want that, we can tune into the evening news, thank you very much. Cuz what starts out as a somewhat promising murder mystery set in a swank private high school in New England quickly tumbles into Gag me with catnip!
Tedious on Steroids
We also found the characters excruciatingly boring after a while. Majorly mundane. Tedious on steroids. Like, how many times can you update your status and check your phone every 12 seconds? Book me the next seat outta Snoresville, Sweet Stuff. Worse, none of these peeps ever seems to learn a blessed thing.
Turn-Offs
Underage drinking abounds. These kids guzzle enough booze to sink the Bismarck. In fact, the Ivies spend so much time pickling their brains, it’s a wonder they can stay vertical long enough to take college entrance exams. That, combined with the out-of–control potty mouths who can’t finish a thought without chucking in some brainless expletive is a big turn off.
Oh, Puh-leeze
On the last, don’t give us that “authenticity” nonsense. If repeated, gratuitous profanity is the best an author can do for “dialogue,” then they’re either lazy, have a limited vocabulary, or suffer from a deplorable lack of imagination. Additionally, we don’t care how rich or famous you are, author pal. If your characters can’t or won’t express themselves without stooping to four-letter words every time they open their mouths, you need to dig them up a mommy. Fast. So additional demerits there.
Kimber: Like the little girl says, these hoomans need a mother/mommy very badly.
Worse, the characters are so Machiavellian and disagreeable that by the end of the book we don’t care whether they get into Romper Room, let alone an Ivy. Just pass the Pepto.
Mom: And a good swift kick in the keyster. (Catnip sold separately.)
Pages & Paws 