I had this book wait-listed at my local library and then realized I had received it as a free e-ARC from NetGalley a few months before, had started it, wasn't hooked and stopped.

I gave it another shot and was, at first, intrigued. As several librarian reviewers have mentioned on NetGalley, it is a great character study. Ivy Lin is not so likeable as the story moves along, but she is intriguing.

You can read the plot in other reviews so I won't get into it here. I was intrigued by Ivy's emotional and situational development, and there was certainly an element of intrigue and suspense at one point. Then, for me, it devolved into sadness, with a strange ending.

I would recommend the read because it kept my interest all the while, yet it isn't a book I would read again. That said, it was well written and I'd certainly give another work by this author a chance.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and the author, for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book.

White Ivy is a thrilling read about a Chinese American named Ivy and her goal to have the perfect American Dream. Susie Yang's writing is intriguing and enticing and begs the question 'how far would you go to reach your dreams?'.

Ivy Lin is a Chinese American who has always envisioned herself having the American Dream. The American Dream to her means having things that can't be taken away. We meet her when she is younger and has a crush on a boy named Gideon. She plans to snake her way into his wealthy family. Those plans are halted when her mother sends her to China. The story moves on to years later and she is still seeking the perfect life.

She becomes friends with none other than Gideon's sister and her plans come back to life. She is easing her way back into his and his family's life. But things start to not go her way yet she won't let her opportunity pass her up one more time.

I think Ivy is such a complex character that readers will question. She always seems to want the life of wealth, happiness, and status yet she does not want to work for it. It almost feels like she feels wronged that it wasn't handed to her.

I give White Ivy 4 stars. It is a complex story with a complex character. It is mysterious and thrilling. I think readers will enjoy the fast-pace and will want to see how it all plays out.

In WHITE IVY, we meet Ivy Lin, a Chinese American teen who grows up outside Boston and attends school with privileged, rich kids. As she learns how to steal from her grandmother, she learns that she and the boy of her dreams, Gideon Speyer, live in two different worlds. Gideon comes from a wealthy, political family while Ivy comes from a poor, immigrant one. When they reconnect as adults, Ivy sees her chance at the live she's always wanted with the guy of her dreams—one with wealth and privilege. We see how her greed and obsession slowly take over her life and the lengths she goes to snatch and keep her dream life.

Yang does a beautiful job of writing unlikeable characters. As soon as we think we can relate to Ivy Lin, Yang throws us uncomfortable and cringe-y situations that continuously leave us questioning Ivy's morality. There are two twists in this book. The first I found predictable, but still entertaining and functional to the plot. The second I did not see coming, but felt it should've been more explored. Regardless, this is a thriller that will have you hooked, but will also shed light on classism and immigrant life. A very strong debut!

This book was so weird, and at times unsettling, but I really enjoyed it.  And honestly, I kind of really liked Ivy (or at least enjoyed reading her story).

Ivy Lin is not the good girl she appears to be from the outside.  She's a thief, she lies, she will do whatever it takes to come out on top.  But you know what, she's really likeable in an odd sort of way.  Between her crazy family and the friends and lovers she spends her time with, the world of Ivy Lin is a wild ride that I hated to get off.  Susie Yang, I will read your books anytime.

I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

This coming of age tale explores both the immigrant and old money experiences. The plot moves slowly, but the storytelling, character development, and plot twists are all top notch. Ivy is a complicated character that you're not expected to like, yet you find yourself rooting for her. I felt the most interesting part of this story was Ivy's own complicated feelings about herself. All in all I feel this is an excellent debut novel. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

The main character is not likeable nor does she have a family to root for. All of this combined with her idealization of whiteness makes for a difficult, problematic read. This would make for an interesting book discussion, but strives too hard to be edgy and shocking. Not recommended.

Ivy Lin is a complicated person. Having spent her first five years in China with her grandmother while her parents established their family in the U.S., she has had to face the pressures of being the daughter of immigrants and wanting to assimilate to the U.S. culture. But she has bad habits of lying and stealing, which only Roux, a boy "from the other side of the tracks," gets a chance to see through her façade of blending into suburbia. In high school, she is infatuated with Gideon, who is white, old money rich, and popular. After an incident at a party, her parents send her to visit family in China and then move while she is away.
This book, written in 3rd person, follows Ivy as a young girl, into adolescence, and as she enter her late 20s. Ivy is depicted as a complicated and deplorable person. I wanted to root for her as she navigated the social circles of the upper-class society snobs and old peers from high school who grew up wealthy and looking down on her. She had layers of self-hate, self-sabotaging tendencies, and insecurities. I didn't absolutely hate the book--Susie Yang did well in highlighting the cultural norms and pressures to seek the American Dream as well as the reality of the immigrant experience that is not one-size-fits-all--I just didn't like Ivy...perhaps if another character had been emphasized...I did sympathize more with her brother, Austin, who was going through it...

This was a compulsively readable, but ultimately disjointed, book.

The first 20% covers Ivy's childhood and adolescence and her dysfunctional relationship with her family. This was my favorite part; there was some interesting commentary on the immigrant experience and fitting in. Then we cut to Ivy as a young adult, working as a first grade teacher because she can't think of anything better to do, when Gideon Speyer, her childhood crush, re-emerges in her life and re-ignites her obsession with him and his pristine, perfect life.

There is so much to like about this book; mainly, the prose is sharp and incisive. There is a lot of telling rather than showing but it absolutely works with the narrative rather than against it. It reads effortlessly but is also sometimes beautiful, with occasional pithy observations that had me doing double-takes. The prose is so polished and elegant; there's something about the way it flows that is both compulsive and rich.

Ultimately, however, the overall story felt a bit messy to me, like it was trying to do too much. This felt like five different narratives stuck into one book. I really loved the focus on being a second-generation immigrant and a minority in a white space and I really wish the focus had been more on that, rather than the somewhat sordid and tawdry dramas that emerge instead. This felt a little bit like a soap opera at times, a feeling that was compounded when, at the 98% mark, we are hit with an extremely random twist that was barely even hinted at, and is then just completely brushed over. There's also a bit in the middle of the book where the narrative strongly hints at an incestuous past between two siblings, and it's just...extremely random and then is never mentioned again.

I was also a bit disappointed with Ivy; the summaries posit her as a skilled thief and liar, which made it seem like she would be this extremely intelligent manipulator and/or con-woman, but she's really just...self-centered, extremely insecure, and painfully mediocre in almost every way. My expectations were that she was going to con her way into Gideon's life but she really just kind of ends up there by chance; she's kind of passive, actually. She's also an extremely unlikable narrator, but most of the other main characters in the book are pretty unlikable as well. Except for Gideon, because there's nothing to like or dislike -- he's a totally blank slate.

I did really enjoy the ending and how Ivy ended up resolving her issues. Ultimately this was an enjoyable wild ride, but pretty uneven as a narrative, in my opinion!

3.75 stars.
This wasn't quite what I expected, but I'm rounding up on the rating because it was definitely hard to put down. While the main character is not supposed to be likeable, I just found it hard to see the purpose of it all.

Just the type of read I needed after a spell of suspense books that had started to become predictable.

While there is a story line to follow that reads like a coming of age story dealing with family strife, love and obsession, the real story is all about Ivy Lin. Who she is, how she got this way, and the reader struggling to decide how they feel about the things that she does.

This is an impressive debut that I found hard to put down.

ARC provided by NetGalley

I’m trying to figure out the perfect term for page turner when I’m talking about an audiobook but for now I’ll go with it. I couldn’t stop listening to this!! I think one reason I loved this so much was the narrator @zwooman completely wowed me as Ivy. Not only Ivy, she brought all the characters as well as the story to life.

I’ve read a few reviews that described this as slow burn and Ivy as unlikeable. I never felt this from the audio. We meet Ivy when she’s a 5 year old who had been raised by her grandma in China and then sent to the US to be with her parents and baby brother who she really didn’t know. We follow Ivy as she tries to fit in with a family she doesn’t feel a part of, friends who treat her as an outcast and an American culture not her own yet one in which she’s expected to be fully acclimated to. There were so many scenes with her parents and friends that made me feel such tremendous empathy for Ivy that by the time she began making some really bad decisions, I understood why she did what she did and I wondered how far she’d go. Turns out- pretty far. Ultimately, for me she was a girl caught between 2 cultures who desperately wanted others to accept and know her although she never really knew herself until the end. Speaking of the end- I found it to be unexpected and thought provoking- my favorite kind of endings!

The fact that this is a debut blows my mind, I’ll be impatiently waiting for @susieyyang ‘s next book!

What a book! I have to say, this took me a few false starts before I could not put it down. I do not know if it was Ivy’s general unlikableness, the fact that I had first heard this book was a thriller (it is really, really not) or the pacing decisions. This book felt very modern and yet very timeless to me.
This book tells us the story of Ivy Lin, and her obsession with Gideon Speyer that starts when she is a teen and resumes after a chance meeting with his sister. Ivy is willing to stop at nothing to be part of the beauty and privilege she sees in Gideon’s life, even when another figure from her childhood threatens that.
I enjoyed reading about Ivy’s social-climbing and her rejection of her family. She reminded me of a lot of coming-of-age stories in that way. Ivy’s thieving is the most literal version of taking what she feels is owed to her. She is so selfish and ruthless, but her blind spots are so amateurish. I enjoyed reading Ivy’s brutal thoughts about her family, friends, and romantic partners, even as I was curious about how much she missed by being so set in her views. Ivy’s relationship with her parents contrasted with the dynamic she had with her grandmother was flawless.
As far as going after what she wants, Ivy is unrivaled, but her methods are what really had me flying through the story. Usually for me, I best enjoy manipulative scammer types when they are committing big, showy crimes, and Ivy’s actions are much stealthier than that. In the book, there is a great line about how we hold the people we value in such esteem because we still view them with childhood eyes, and Ivy’s fixation on Gideon and his family and her determination to be worthy of him felt like a suspended goal in a lot of ways. This book had a lot of thriller-like tendencies, but the writing was perfectly literary. The reflections on privilege and the desperation to obtain it make this book a must-read for me.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC!

This book had everything and then some, cultural drama, grit, fantastic character development. The ending was a bit flat but overall it was very enjoyable

Loved this book, one of my favorites from 2020. This is a razor sharp view of the immigrant experience. All of the characters were well rounded and the twists kept me on my toes the whole book.

WHITE IVY
4/5 Stars

I’m a little late on this review, but I am so conflicted when it comes to this book! I must say, the likes I have come out with overpower some of the negatives I had. For example, I loved the development of the secondary characters, even though there were many unlikable ones, and I truly loved the relationship Ivy has with her grandmother. This offset the fact that I HATED IVY! She was such an unlikable protagonist, but I do believe that was intentional, and for that I say well done!

The suspense with Ivy and if she would get her happy ending was something that I really enjoyed, and it kept me wanting to read at a rapid pace! I will say, there were some parts in the book that were easy to figure out early on for me as a reader - and it kind of annoyed me because it took Ivy so long to figure out.

I’ve got to say the writing in this guy was spectacular!

Stunningly Unpredictable
s crazy as the main character Ivy, the plot of Susie Yang’s debut novel White Ivy has it all: twists, turns, thieving grandmothers, old school disciplinarian Chinese parents, teenage angst, popularity wars, envy, lying, seduction, bad guys you root for, good guys you don’t like, Ivy League money, mob ties, and a broke-down preppy vacay house. Ivy Yin is trouble but at the same time just an unsatisfied, self conscious teenager trying to separate herself from her Chinese family in a very white Boston suburb when a infraction sleep-over at the beautiful blond crush Gideon Speyer’s perfect home (father’s a senator) results in her first sex with troubled teen and best friend Roux (coming from his own messed childhood minus a father and a mother in an open affair with an Italian mobster) and a summer banished to China to stay with relatives both rich and poor. This is all before we even get to her all grown up, out of college, and just as unsatisfied as ever. Her Chinese grandmother taught her to steal when she was just wee and it becomes her most basic coping mechanism to deal with feeling forever not enough and she never stops wanting what she can’t have and didn’t earn.

Yang seriously nails it. (Sidebar: LOVE Roux. Shouldn’t but do.)

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com

My review for Shelf Awareness Pro is here: https://shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3839#m50066

The review was also cross-posted to Smithsonian BookDragon: http://smithsonianapa.org/bookdragon/white-ivy-by-susie-yang-in-shelf-awareness/

My last lingering eARC from 2020 and I saved a great read for last. Ivy struggles to fit in, and this may be her status as the child of immigrants partially raised by her grandmother in China when she was very young, who taught her how to steal. But I also think her classmates are reacting to something else - she's a bit of a sociopath, really.. I kept being reminded of Tom Ripley...

The reader follows Ivy from her childhood to a culminating party where she is mortified in front of her crush, then moves in stages through high school, college, after college.... Her decisions, reinventions, and sharp turns kept me reading!

This was not for me. I did not "get" the overall message. The unlikeable narrator was a little too unlikeable for my taste; I could not get past the awful things she did.

I found this book incredibly addictive to read, even though I was never really sure where it was going. For those who enjoy unlikeable characters, there has never been a more perfect book!

I can admit the ending was not what I wanted, but it really worked with the story and was true to the characters. I'd definitely recommend to readers who are looking for something different with deep characterization and don't require a HEA.