This is a fabulous story that fans of The Secret History will especially enjoy. Yang is a beautiful writer and I love her critique of privileged America. It’s about time we have another point of view in WASP literature. I hope Yang will write more.

Wow. I enjoyed this one. It was such a wild ride and went places I never expected it to go. Ivy was such an interesting character.

I have mixed emotions about this book. The writing kept me captivated but the story itself did not sit well with me. The things that Ivy does to get what she thinks she wants were a bit much. A perfect example of "be careful what you wish for....you just might get it".

Ivy Lin is a master manipulator who makes it her mission to infiltrate Boston's elite society that she has so admired since middle school. Just when Ivy thinks she has made significant inroads, someone from her past resurfaces and puts all that she has worked for in jeopardy. Will this life that Ivy has sacrificed so much for, including her family, a love and a culture be worth it? Pick up White Ivy and read for yourself.
White Ivy by Susie Yang is a literary suspense novel with a unique spin on the Chinese immmigrant experience. It is deep dive into the obscure and ominous mind of our outlandish protagonist Ivy Lin. The first act strong I enjoyed getting to know Ivy and the Lin family. Her grandmother, Meifeng who unknowingly planted seeds of discontent in Ivy, was my favorite character I loved her many macabre pearls of wisdom which she imparted to Ivy such as, "Once a person knows hunger, he'll count every grain of rice." This act is a deep dive into Ivy's psyche which lays the groundwork for the book.
The second act lost me a bit because nothing about the life Ivy wanted for herself interested or intrigued me, the people she aspired to emulate were bland and boring! Yes, Ivy was not the most affable character, still she is a fully realized one whom I grew to understand. Yet I just never saw the appeal of this uppercrust society Yang created, perhaps that was Yang's point, to convey through Ivy's singular point of view how mundane this world truly is, yet Ivy is so hungry to succeed in western culture that she is blinded to it. The final act should have been more satisfying but I felt that it relied too much on old tropes and tired stereotypical societal norms which I would hope we are not still shackled to in 2020 to advance the plot however Ivy as a character with agency still managed to shine til the end. Hence, I do think White Ivy is worth the read for the character study alone. I rate it 3.95 stars.

White Ivy is an interesting story about a complicated Chinese immigrant. I did feel very invested in what happened and I enjoyed the quick visit to China. Sometimes it felt painfully slow but the ending was solid which made it worth getting through the slow times.
Like so many others I’ve read in 2020 it was good but it great

Thank you Net Galley for a copy of White Ivy. This book was an interesting take on the thought "you make your own life". What a craft girl Ivy is!

This one was pretty slow burn up until the very end. It did a very good job examining culture, family, greed, and assimilation. Ivy was a frustrating character in that she often felt ashamed of her family and background and sought wealth and power at the expense of her true self or her relationships to the people that truly matter in her life. I was absolutely not expecting the ending and loved how it tied up in the end.

Ivy is a Chinese immigrant who grew up in a low income area near Boston. Before she arrived in the United States she lived with her grandmother in China. Her close relationship with her Grandmother continues when her Grandmother also eventually comes to the United States. Her Grandmother teaches Ivy to steal and as stealing soon becomes second nature to her, Ivy becomes a very dishonest person.

When Ivy is old enough she is able to attend a private preppy school because her father is an employee at the school. While she is a student there she becomes obsessed with one of the boys in her class. His name is Gideon Speyer. He and his rich family represent everything that Ivy wants for her future. At the same time, Ivy has a relationship with a lower class childhood male friend named Roux. Ivy and Roux have similar backgrounds making their friendship a very comfortable one.

As Ivy gets older, her stealing and dishonesty eventually get her into trouble and her parents send her to China for the summer. When she returns, she is devastated to learn that her family has moved away from Boston and thus from Gideon.

Years later when Ivy has finished college and is a teacher, she has a chance encounter with Gideon’s sister. This meeting brings about a new start to the relationship between Ivy and Gideon. Another darker relationship from Ivy's past, however, pops up again when Roux reenters her life at about the same time. Ivy and Roux begin to secretly see one another while Ivy is engaged to Gideon and because of this Ivy finds that her life gets extremely complicated as she becomes involved in this love triangle.

The book offers a look into the experiences of a family who has migrated from China to the United States while it also details the coming of age story for one of its members. It is a story about pursuing the elusive American dream. Ivy’s family eventually builds a successful family business while Ivy resorts to dishonest, manipulative, deceitful, and criminal methods to achieve her goal to better her life.

The author employs a plot twist at the end which leaves Ivy’s future destiny in question. However, even though the narrative was well executed, the twist was not totally unexpected. And due to Ivy’s unsavory and unappealing character, I didn’t have much compassion for her sorry circumstances.

This debut novel explores two sides of life. It examines both the privilege that comes from social class and status as well as the poverty and insecurity that belongs to those without these benefits. The story itself promotes the theory that one might go to any length to cross the divide from one social path to the other.

Ivy Linn learns from her grandmother how to take. While perusing garage sales and thrift stores, she learns the art of taking, a bent spoon, here, a tag switched on a sweater there. Ivy finds herself in 2 worlds, living in a tadeonal Chinese family while attempting to fit into the life of a preteen in the United States.

Her only real friend, Roux, is the son of the town harlot, unpopular and uncared-for, and knows and accepts Ivy for who and what she is. When her father is hired by a prestigious private school, she finds herself learning to play into people’s perceptions and falling for beautiful Gideon Speyer and leaving Roux in the dust.

After deceiving her parents in order to attend a sleep-over at Gideon’s house and getting caught, Ivy is sent to visit relatives in China and while she gone, her family relocates, leaving Gideon hundreds of miles away.
Years later, Ivy crossed paths with Gideon’s sister and finds herself being pulled (willingly) into Gideon’s orbit. But as always, Ivy finds herself with a foot in two worlds, and, in a weird twist of fate, also reconnects with Roux.

Lies and deceit, twist and turns, and while many were predictable, the author kept me second guessing my second guesses.

Ivy is hard to like, she is a user but there were times throughout the telling where I could see how each misstep in her life and by herself and her family brought her to where she is. And she isn’t the only liar and deceiver and she finds herself caught up in other people’s lies as well as her own and has to decide how long and to what degree she will stay entangled.

A bit of a slow build but the last third was very fast paced enjoyable.

Thank you to @librofm @simonandschuster @simon.audio and @netgalley for the ARC and ALC of White Ivy by Susie Yang! This book was a bit slow to start for me, but by the midpoint I was completely hooked in the tangled web of lies, unlikeable characters, and and slow burn suspense that made up this complex and dark tale.

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Synopsis from the publisher: Ivy Lin is a thief and a liar—but you’d never know it by looking at her. Raised outside of Boston, Ivy’s immigrant grandmother relies on Ivy’s mild appearance for cover as she teaches her granddaughter how to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops. 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, and 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 Ivy 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.

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I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I bounced between listening and reading on my kindle, but definitely loved the voice narrator Emily Woo Zeller gave to Ivy and the cast of characters drawn into her web. If you like dark family drama type stories then definitely give this one a read.

This being a slow burn plus an unlikeable narrator together made this one just meh for me.

*I received this ARC from the publisher via Netgalley.

I really liked Susie Yang's backstory. She worked in the tech world and then decided to write a book. I'm always intrigued by people who change careers, and I think Yang's diverse background helped the book feel more well-rounded than some other debut novels.

We meet Ivy Lin as a young teenager who's obsessed with her crush, Gideon Speyer, and then again when the two are later reunited in their 20s. Ivy does everything she can to fit into Gideon's world of the wealthy. Her parents (Chinese immigrants) have tried to instill independence and a spunky nature, but Ivy still falls into many traps laid out in a world where everyone is using someone else to get where they want to go. As noted in many reviews, it's true that Ivy doesn't have a lot of redeeming qualities and a lot of her decisions are quite maddening. But she is a character that feels truly honest and the descriptions of how she uses and abuses her own body felt realistic and haunting.

Unfortunately, this book dragged for me quite a bit. I was interested to see where Ivy's journey would take her but it felt like there was very little action in the plot until the very end. There are a few twists in the story, but I ended up figuring them out pretty early, so the predictability felt frustrating. I would have loved a more traditional story structure since the climax was at the very end. I might check out Yang's future books if the story sounds intriguing, but this one was not a home run for me.

Susie Yang's debut novel, "White Ivy," following the captivating Ivy Lin through from her childhood through her late 20s as she tells countless white lies (and far worse) to family, her friends, and herself. I enjoyed Yang's narration and storytelling style, though it was a bit slow at times, especially at the start of the book. The book's strongest points were when Yang laser-focused in on Ivy's internal struggle, her spiraling thoughts, and keen observations of the world and the people around her. One of my favorite lines, for example, "Ivy's anger turned to forlorn disgust. She would never be able to make this plain, undeviating man understand that the most fragile inner parts of a woman were compiled from a million subtle looks and careless statements from others, this was identity."

On nearly every page Yang plunges the reader deep into Ivy's psyche, a woman who is searching for satisfaction, something the character can never quite achieve, no matter how high she climbs in life or how far away she crawls from her past. As Yang beautiful explains, "It was a lowly pleasure, one that left her gasping and exhausted and empty. But what of the soul--that fickle creature that was not so easily satisfied." I love to read about and see the world through the eyes of a flawed character, it is an excellent form of escapism. In addition to Ivy, other characters such as Roux, Ivy's childhood friend and lover, Sylvia, Ivy's soon-to-be sister in law, and Ivy's grandmother, all provide a wealth of questionable actions and justifications.

While I don't think this book will appeal to everyone since it was quite brutal and dark, it was also poignantly honesty and I found the main character to be exceptionally compelling. I would recommend "White Ivy" for anyone who enjoyed "Social Creature" by Tara Isabella Burton or "My Dark Vanessa" by Kate Elizabeth Russell.

I loved this book and will wholeheartedly recommend this to my patrons and book clubs. Ivy, a complicated Chinese American girl learned to be a thief, wanting the finer things in life. She falls in love with two different men, always trying to grab the American dream any way she can. Wanting desperately to fit in, Ivy has a great coming of age story. Lots of complicated characters make this a thrilling debut novel.

I have deliberately avoidied reading about White Ivy after seeing a glowing review and deciding I REALLY wanted to read it. Thanks to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for this honest review.

It’s not easy to put this one into a single genre. It’s a coming-of-age story, a family drama that includes the experience of a family of immigrants from China, and there’s a bit of mystery/suspense as well. I loved it, and I keep thinking about it.

The protagonist, Ivy Lin, was born in China and lived there until the age of five, when she came to the U.S. to join her parents, who had left her with her maternal grandmother for a few years while they got settled. Ivy goes from childhood to adulthood always trying to fit in. Her parents are hard working immigrants who want her to become a doctor. Instead, she becomes a first-grade teacher after finishing college. All along the way, Ivy never felt like she fit in. In middle school, she yearns to be popular and is fixated on a WASPy boy named Gideon Speyer, but her parents send her for a visit to China, and when she gets back, they tell her they moved to New Jersey! It isn’t until her twenties that she reconnects with Gideon and his pretentious sister Sylvia and works her ass off trying to fit in…

The reader sees both the immigrant experience of Ivy’s parents and grandmother and her struggle to find her own identity. Ivy isn’t likeable…but then she is surrounded by other unlikeable people, and part of my reaction was “they aren’t worth it! Go find people with whom you can be yourself!” Ivy is dishonest, greedy, and superficial. And her relationship with her old friend from childhood reveals all you need to know about Ivy. There is a great OH EM GEE moment…but no spoilers!

We get to watch Ivy’s character develop including her greed, dishonesty, selfishness, and charm along with her never-ending longing to fit in to what she sees as the American Dream (including, of course, lots of $$$). It’s a good choice for book clubs, and it really is worth *****.

I liked this book, especially since it focused on immigrants, but the stakes didn't feel super high and it felt like it wasn't complete. Was Gideon's family secretly broke? Was anyone not a trash human?

This took a little bit to hook me but once it did I could not put it down. This is a book I will be recommending to all of my friends.

White Ivy was a wonderful debut novel, and one you need to add to your list. This book was slow at times but provided great character development. I could not put this book down. Well done, Susie Yang!

Ivy Lin is a Chinese girl that was born in China but moved to America at a young age. She’s embarrassed by her frugal parents who don’t understand her desire to be American. They live in a low-income complex, her family struggling to make ends meet. Her family sends her off to a private school. It is here that Ivy gets a taste of the “good life” and decides it is the life she wants no matter what the cost.

Ivy has something about her that draws people to her. They see the good in her, even though she feels she is filled with darkness. Her moral lines are blurry and flows in the direction of what she needs at that moment. Yet, everyone loves Ivy. She is a master manipulator and makes people want to do things for her.

The ending was one I never saw coming! I loved it!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for giving me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

One can approach this book in two different ways: as a thriller or as a coming of age story. Although Ivy was a flawed character whose dark side would have played well into a psychological suspense, I felt that the plot was slower paced than your typical thriller and had more curves than twists and turns. As a coming of age story White Ivy was more compelling.

You got to see how the high expectations placed on immigrant children impact their lives. With Austin we see what happens when you try to navigate both worlds and fail to keep your head above water. Yang illustrated the burden of denial and how the family's dynamics played into his disease.
Ivy realizes though that she will never live up to her parents' dreams. But she finds that she is able to get by on her cunning. That at times the best strategy for straddling both worlds is to fade to the background and not bring much attention to herself. But even with all of her maneuvering, we still see her self doubt and fear.

Ivy certainly is a complex character and my feelings towards her were all over the map. I certainly did not agree with all of her decisions but Yang does a great job of showing you how Ivy came to be this flawed person and why she does what she does.

Overall, White Ivy was a competent debut and Yang's writing skills are evident. This book might not have been all that I was expecting but I will definitely give Yang's next book a chance.

Ivy is not a likeable character. She hurts her family and people who love her a lot. I loved following her through her teen to adult years. I do think the story could have been a bit shorter as I was bored some of the time. But I loved the watching the transition of Ivy. I definitely would not categorize this as a mystery/thriller; more so a YA or Women’s fiction. Something I love about coming of age books..