This genre-defying novel grabbed me from the first sentence. A slow burn reminiscent of Donna Tartt's Secret HIstory with a dash of Goldfinch, and with flashes of My Year of Rest and Relaxation in Ivy's commitment to self-destruction and lack of human connection or empathy. Even her supposed love of Gideon is more about what he represents than the actual depth of their relationship. However, these comparisons are just to illustrate that this novel may be as enduring in the mind of the reader as the aforementioned, taking nothing away from the author's unique voice. Ivy is the perfect unsympathetic and self-serving protagonist, though having insight into what has made her such, I still found myself wanting things to work out for her. Avoiding spoilers, I did see a couple plot twists coming, though was still left guessing how it all would end - which was a little rushed, but wholly satisfying. Could have used some tighter editing in places, though overall, an incredibly impressive debut, and will eagerly await what comes next for Susie Yang.

Thank you to NetGalley for ARC in exchange for my honest review.

One of the best reads of 2020. Dark but I think the blurb is misleading. I loved the character of ivy and this story

Deep character study on how certain personalities can turn out in life. Ivy isn't likeable or respectable as the female protagonist. She lives life by the seat of it's pants and does what she wants when she wants. If you want a contemporary novel that brings the drama with a bit of Chinese culture here it is.

I think I’m really getting good at picking out fiction I like, because this is yet another one that worked for me. It had so much that I like- a complicated main character, solid writing, examination of culture and family, and the inability to describe just what exactly it is that made me love the story so much in the first place.

Ivy Lin’s personality is filled with dichotomy. She’s Chinese, she’s American. She’s light and she’s dark. She’s opinionated and she’s submissive. She smokes, she doesn’t smoke. It was interesting to read along and see how she’d react. A comp that came to mind when reading this was SOCIAL CREATURES by Tara Isabella Burton, in that both main characters mold their personalities to try and ingratiate themselves to the rich crowd they aspire to be a part of.

All in all, this was great fun and I can see why it’s a @readwithjenna book club pick!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ivy Lin is a Chinese American who learns some bad habits from her grandmother (like stealing). She grows up with difficult relationships and has an estranged relationship with her mother. She has a friend, Roux, that sticks by her.

The book follows Ivy through her teen and adult years, and her many issues. I enjoyed reading this but absolutely hated Ivy and some of the things she did. I had a hard time putting this down and really enjoyed the book.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of White Ivy by Susie Yang.

Holy hot dang, this book. Reading it felt like being on a taffy pull, pulling, folding, lots of tension. I was utterly exhausted by the end.

Who were the good guys? Who were the bad guys? And does it matter, does life even work that way?

Ivy is a girl who was always surrounded by wealth, but never a participant of it. Her grandma taught her to steal at an early age, and it stuck her entire life. After her exasperated parents send her off for reform to China, she returns to Boston to find the sister of her early heartthrob Gideon.

Soon Ivy and Gideon strike up a relationship, but Ivy is not everything she appears to be, and now another person from her past has appeared, threatening to expose all of her secrets...

Just is a deliciously relentless drama with issues or race, class, crime, deception and more. It's a slow burn with a white hot surface that kept me interested until the very last page.

DNF at 15%. I think this is a case of wrong time. I can see why White Ivy is getting rave reviews but it is not for me right now. Thank you to the publisher, Netgalley and Librofm for the advance reading and listening copies.

This was a great debut novel. It kept me guessing on what Ivy would do next to achieve the social status that she thought she deserved. Did not see the reveal at the end coming!

White Ivy is a spectacular debut novel from Susie Yang following Ivy Lin, a young Chinese girl growing up in the United States as she does whatever it takes to find status in a world in which she feels she never quite fits into. It’s a narrative of an adolescent wrestling with her identity and I was immediately struck by how engrossing this book was.

I grew up reading books that were usually outside of my age range and as soon as I started reading White Ivy it reminded me of some of the adult books I had picked up over my late elementary and middle school years. The writing fit the time period encapsulated in the book perfectly. It’s hit or miss how I end up feeling about novels with main characters like Ivy. She’s conniving and selfish and I continuously cycled between hating her and having a smidgen of hope for her. There were moments where I related to her and moments I pitied her and even more where I was in absolute disbelief of who Ivy was becoming as a person.

The plot was slow moving but as I read this in one sitting I felt so many emotions. It burned to read and while I tried to predict where the story arc was going multiple times when I finally did flip to the last page I was speechless. Each of the characters so clearly had their own motivations that even after finishing this book I can’t help but imagine what else might have been revealed if other characters had their own perspectives. Ivy was so biased and so consumed with her own need for success that her neglect towards pieces of her life outside of her romantic relationship was painful. I wanted so much more for Ivy but her ultimate decisions led to a shocking ending that I still can’t stop thinking about. This book was different from anything I’ve read in a long time and I couldn’t recommend it more.

If you like literary books with dark undercurrents, this one is definitely for you. White Ivy starts out as a coming-of-age/immigration story. Ivy comes to the U.S. from China as a young child and grows up in the Northeast. She feels like a perennial outsider at the fancy private school she attends for free as the child of a faculty member. There she fixates on a WASPy boy, Gideon, and his picture-perfect family. Her grandmother has tutored her in stealing and she also begins shoplifting, pilfering the American things she needs to fit in. She's egged on by her Romanian neighbor, Roux.

Then a LOT of other stuff happens (Ivy visits family in China, her family moves and she switches to a predominantly Asian school, which she hates, she goes to a women's college, she becomes a teacher.)

When Ivy runs into Sylvia, Gideon's sister, she begins to slowly insinuate herself into Gideon's social circle, despite the obvious disapproval of Gideon's best friend Tom and the coolness of Gideon's family toward her. When Roux also pops back into Ivy's life, things get even more complicated.

Susie Yang is a talented writer. Her eye for detail and characterization is really strong. There is a lot of information in the book that's interesting but takes time to pay off. I'd argue that to understand Ivy and her choices, you need this information. But some readers used to the pace of modern commercial fiction (especially those, who, like me, go in expecting a fast-paced thriller) might not have the patience to wait.

All in all, I thought White Ivy was both very sharply-observed and really thought provoking. If you're a reader who likes a book that moves at a fast pace, this one could frustrate you.

love every minute of this book! perfect from the beginning to end. easy read. interesting. good book club book. tons to discuss. definitely recommend it to all.

This one was a little hard to get into initially.  I didn't initially identify with Amy and that made it difficult to really connect with the character.  I'm glad I stuck with it though, because the more I read, meant the more understanding I was of Amy and her motivations.  Let's be clear, I certainly didn't agree with her actions or decisions, but the author had done enough character building and provided enough background that I understood where Amy was coming from.  Plus the whole idea of measuring your success in life by how wealthy you are or how much you have is baffling to me.  And yes, I understand just how privileged I am to be saying that.  The notion of putting up this whole facade that somehow making an advantageous marriage will someone wipe out your past or makeup for your history is just strange to me.  All in all, I enjoyed this one and I'm glad I didn't give up on it.

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read and review White Ivy.

It took me a few to acclimate to the writing but once about halfway, after the backstory and getting to know the basis of the main character, it got good. I mean, real good. I would love a psychoanalytical perspective on Ivy and her actions, the character depth was that good. The back and forth between the good and bad and Ivy's perspective was amazingly deep and involved.

Also, that ending was explosive! I highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for allowing me the opportunity to read this book and share my review! I am going to say that while it started out slow for me, it ended with a bang! I really enjoyed this book and it has been my first read by this author, definitely not my last!

The story takes you the tales of immigration, self preservation and tension! Well written, shocker at the end, at least for me and I would recommend this to all!

Interesting coming of age story with a love triangle twist. Although the story was very slow to unfold I was glued to the pages waiting for the twists. Very complex character in Ivy which I loved to hate her. Solid book!

Ivy is a first generation Chinese immigrant who has totally internalized the American Dream of being in the top 1% regardless of the cost. It fact, Ivy is trying to be what she thinks rich, white Gideon wants in a wife by becoming White Ivy.

The pacing is more at a literary fiction level than a thriller—slower to get you into Ivy’s head. However, the plot itself is intriguing. I could feel the pull that was forcing Ivy to make some radical compromises to get the American Dream as she perceives it. Was she unsympathetic? Yes, she is definitely not the nicest person. But I was still fascinated by her voice. 5 stars!

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

A dark romance about a young Chinese woman growing up in a traditional household. However, Ivy is anything bit traditional. She learns to steal at a young age to gain status and continues to use nefarious wiles to get what she wants. The novel builds to shocking end where Ivy's true character shines.

I'm just going to jump right in here: THIS IS NOT WHAT I WAS EXPECTING.

I requested this book on NetGalley, completely forgot I had it, and then remembered it the day before it was published. I SHOULD NOT HAVE WAITED TO READ IT. IF YOU HAVE IT SITTING ON YOUR SHELF, READ IT NOW. That being said... I still have no idea what genre this was. It's something more than fiction, maybe satire. Dark, dark satire.

Ivy is a Chinese girl growing up in a rich white town with her younger brother, her parents, and the grandmother who helped raise her. After getting a taste of wealth and the respect that comes with it, Ivy becomes obsessed with social progress. Like so many immigrants and BIPOC, she struggles finding her place in spaces that weren't made to accommodate her. She feels ostracized by her classmates, dismissed by boys and girls alike, and misunderstood by her parents who can't see the culture clash happening in their own home.

What's so great about this book is that I think it highlights what a LOT of people of color experience, which is this strange social disease characterized by a desire to close the distance between them and whiteness. I think of it as "white proximity" - by which I mean the desire to get as close as you can to whiteness (and it's privileges, perceived poise, wealth, etc.) as possible. It's a hamster wheel though, because at the end of the day, whiteness isn't something than can be attained. I could go on about this for days, but this is obviously the product of huge gaps in generational wealth, education, and access between white Americans and their non-white counterparts.

So, as is evident, there's some loaded social topics being explored here, as well as the topics more specific to Asian-American households (I might specifically note a resistance to seeking mental health, a language barrier, a strong emphasis on higher education and prestigious employment, to name a few). I went into this thinking it was going to be more of a family drama about the struggle between who Ivy is and who Ivy wants to become.

I WOULD BE WRONG! About half way though, the book takes a hard left and drifts into a dark portrayal of a woman desperate to maintain and increase her social status at all costs. Ivy's relationship with Gideon and his sister Sylvia were absolutely fascinating, and I thought Ivy's distress really jumped off the pages. Yang did a wonderful job of weaving a generational tale all the way through what is essentially a reflection on and maybe even a critique of white/non-white relations in the U.S.

I managed to call the two major twists before they happened, but that didn't necessarily take away from the impact. In fact, they somehow hit me harder as I read them once I could really see what those relationships said about Ivy and Gideon and Roux and Sylvia. I think I'll be thinking about this for a LONG time. Please tell me your thoughts, because by this rambling review, you can probably see I haven't sorted through my own yet.

Highly recommend.

4 amazing debut stars

This was a fascinating character study, a slow burn coming of age story, and finally finding peace. Of course, the main character is Ivy and we see her as a five year old leaving China and her grandma behind to come to the US to live with her parents – strangers at this point to her. It broke my heart a bit that Ivy’s parents were not very affectionate with her. Ivy falls into a life of shoplifting and lying and always seems to be reaching for more, never really satisfied with the life that she has. At a private school, she falls hard for Gideon Speyer, but is sent away by her family before anything can develop.

Years later, Ivy has settled in as a teacher when her path crosses with the Speyer family again and now she works hard to become part of the Speyer family. Maybe this could bring her happiness?

There are definitely some bumps in the road and I wasn’t sure where this story was going to end up, but I found myself hoping that Ivy would find the thing that really made her happy, whether that was a fulfilling career, a life with Gideon, or maybe something else entirely. She really does come full circle and I enjoyed being along for the ride. Although I’m not sure I would want to be friends with her in real life!

Coming of age/ immigrant story of Ivy, growing up in a working class Chinese-American household with aspirations of the American dream as personified by her school crush on Gideon and the reality of her world in the boy, Roux, who sees her for who she is. Great debut novel.

Thanks to Susan Yang, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.