Oct 31

Oct 31 White Ivy

Author: Susie Yang
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

A dazzling debut novel about a young woman’s dark obsession with her privileged classmate and the lengths she’ll go to win his love

Ivy Lin is a thief and a liar — but you’d never know it by looking at her. Raised outside of Boston, she is taught how to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops by her immigrant grandmother. Thieving allows Ivy to accumulate the trappings of a suburban teen — and, most importantly, to attract the attention of Gideon Speyer, the golden boy of a wealthy political family. But when Ivy’s mother discovers her trespasses, punishment is swift and Ivy is sent to China, where her dream instantly evaporates.

Years later, Ivy has grown into a poised yet restless young woman, haunted by her conflicting feelings about her upbringing and her family. Back in Boston, when she bumps into Sylvia Speyer, Gideon’s sister, a reconnection with Gideon seems not only inevitable — it feels like fate.

Slowly, Ivy sinks her claws into Gideon and the entire Speyer clan by attending fancy dinners and weekend getaways to the Cape. But just as Ivy is about to have everything she’s ever wanted, a ghost from her past resurfaces, threatening the nearly perfect life she’s worked so hard to build.

Filled with surprising twists and offering sharp insights into the immigrant experience, White Ivy is both a love triangle and a coming-of-age story, as well as a glimpse into the dark side of a woman who yearns for success at any cost.

TL;DR Review

White Ivy is a sharp, almost dark, and surprising book about a woman who will go to any lengths to get what she wants. Dramatic yet honest, it also has an ending that will drop your jaw.

For you if: You like contemporary novels that bring the drama and aren’t afraid to point out uncomfortable truths.

Full Review

Big thanks to Simon & Schuster for sending me an advanced review copy of White Ivy, which will be published November 3.

White Ivy is an impressive debut, and I enjoyed it even though it isn’t the type of book I typically read. I don’t tend to gravitate toward dramatic contemporary novels featuring unlikeable characters who make terrible choices lol. But here, Susie Yang takes that kind of story and stares at you from the pages while she’s telling it, never looking away even when you break eye contact. She finds the squirmiest moments of social norms and expectations and says them bluntly, which is somehow both refreshing and even more squirmy. It was fascinating.

The story is about a girl named Ivy, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who just desperately wants to break away from them. After a somewhat rebellious childhood, she’s reconnected with her rich grade-school crush years later, and they start dating. It’s everything she’s ever wanted. Or is it? Can she have life both ways? Ivy will do, say, and become whatever it takes to get what she wants, even if she doesn’t always know what that is. The book is about class and desire and family and social norms, and the simultaneous adherence to and rebellion against all those things.

I won’t say that I didn’t waver a few times in the middle, wondering if this book was for me, given how sort of terrible Ivy and some of the secondary characters are. But I’m really glad I pushed through to the end, because THAT ENDING. There was one part I definitely couldn’t have seen coming that dropped my jaw, swiftly followed by something that I can’t BELIEVE I didn’t see coming.

If you read for enjoyment/plot alone and don’t like to read about unlikeable characters, then I’m not sure this one is for you. But if you seek out books that do really interesting things from a character and storytelling perspective, and you’re willing to hang in there to experience it and see it pay off, then I recommend it.