I loved this book. Excellent twists and turns, and it was gloriously cut throat. If you like a good YA thriller, this is your book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
This book started strong, but as it went on, it fell flat for me. As this book got closer to the end, I found it a bit obvious and easy to guess. It wasn't a terrible book, but I think that the emotional grey area that the characters had could have been done a bit better. I also think that some details weren't entirely needed and just seemed to have been added for plot twists. Overall, you should give this book a shot if you enjoy Karen McManus's work.

As someone who applied to Ivy League schools and attended one, I can say college admissions were intense then and they are probably worse now. From my college friends that went to similar boarding schools, I can attest that sabotaging and breaking friendships over colleges is not unheard of, and maybe even more common than we think. Of course, there wasn't any murder that I heard of. Alexa Donne captured very well the intensity that is college admissions. While you are experiencing them yourself, there is nothing more important that getting the congratulations email. I wanted to just hug the students at this school and tell them that the name of the college isn't worth all of this. Because even though they were fiction characters, I think we all know high school seniors like them that put all their eggs in one basket (or college in this case).

Mysery-wise I think the story was well built. The suspense built up and there was never a second I thought any of the characters were safe. It was a fast-paced story that didn't let you put the book down even for a second. So many twists and turns I didn't see coming.

I appreciated how Alexa Donne acknowledged that these characters were very exaggerated forms of the overachiever Ivy-bound student. I could tell from her writing and references that Alexa Donne has experience with students applying to these types of schools. Her mentions of College Confidential made me break out into sweats from anxiety I did not know I still held for that site even years later. Overall, I think this extreme college admissions story is built in enough reality, but also some absurd drama that will make high school students both relate to the characters, but also see how absurd the college admissions process can be.

Book Review for The Ivies by Alexa Donne
Full review for this title can be found at: @fyebooks on Instagram!

Misses the mark for me. The girls are not likable at all, the plot is meager, and the pacing too slow. I didn’t find anything to enjoy about this book.

A timely fictional story based on a true system, a biased admissions process, and unfair access the elite have to the Ivy universities. This fast-paced whodunnit will keep readers guessing and rethink the envy we have for the 1%.

Perfect recommendation for Karen M. McManus fans.

(current events reference COVID-19 Pandemic)

The Ivies was a fun and engaging read that had plenty of twists and turns throughout the plot. I began the novel thinking it was going to be a predictable thriller, however I was pleasantly surprised with the hidden and revealed moments of the text.

Most of the characters, I loved to hate but I really felt some empathy with the main character, Olivia who was stuck in a world that was not hers. This novel brimming with dark academia and ruthless ambition really pulls the reader in from the beginning and keeps the reader turning pages until the very end.

Mean Girls meets Karen McManus meets in The Ivies where 5 boarding school queens will do absolutely anything to get into the Ivy League school of their choice.

Olivia is the odd one out of the group as a scholarship student but still participates in the sabotage and underhanded exploits of The Ivies. However, she has no clue how much more the other four have done to get ahead. When one of the Ivies ends up dead, Olivia decides to discover the murderer and ends up learning more about her "friends" and herself than she could have ever bargained for.

Even if you discover the killer before they're revealed, the motive will still shock you.

Gimmie a murdering boarding school book and I'm a happy girl.

The Ivies</em> is a fun and surprising novel by Alexa Donne whose story encompasses romance, secret affairs, murder and mean girls all in one. I love a good boarding school book and this one is a step above. Rich with devious mean girls and lots of fun characters, no one is as they seem.

I'm not going to lie. About half way through the book I thought I knew what was going on.

But I didn't.

Like, not at all.

The beginning of the book is a solid set up for the story and you need it to really understand all of the craziness that happens. The beginning is part detective novel and the second half of the book is all thriller. I like how Olivia is not innocent, how she was just as flawed as the rest of the Ivies. I loved the mean girls. They're terrible, so so terrible. OMG It was a treat. Because we all know those girls and there's something fascinating and intriguing about them, how they veer so far.

I don't want to give anything away because I think you really have to read the book to enjoy the suspense. It's a fun murder mean girls mystery with so many twists, I was genuinely impressed with all of the threads the author kept going, intriguing me more and more every page.

Go get this one. It's perfect for a weekend.

Wow. Okay. I have thoughts.
The main plot follows Olivia Winters: a scholarship kid at snobby prep school whose somehow managed to befriend a brood of rich bitches. But things start to unravel when someone is murdered on campus. Olivia takes it upon herself to piece together clues and finds that her so-called friends might be murderers as well as Ivy hopefuls.

I genuinely could not stop reading this novel until I figured out who did the who-done-it. There were so many characters that could have enough motive that I was left spinning. In the end, when the killer was exposed, I was pretty satisfied with it. I was simultaneously like "I knew it, I knew it!" and "Shit! It's not ---?!"
Donne's writing has really improved from Brightly Burning. There were some sentences I stopped and thought, 'Huh. What a good way to put that.'

I know this is nitpicky, but the coronavirus references threw me for a loop. It was hard to ground myself where coronavirus is canon in a novel set in 2021 America and not the dominant thought in everyone's head. They were gathering! No masks! Ah! That was literally all I thought about at one point in the novel.
But, quite simply, this just isn't a book that'll stick with me long. I'll forget the characters and the plot with time and I don't think my mind will trail back to it like it does with Harry Potter or Addie LaRue. There's nothing about this novel that introduces a new message. So while it's a perfectly fun time, I couldn't give it 5/5 stars.
However, for fans of Pretty Little Liars, I couldn't recommend this more!

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

This was a great YA thriller! I thoroughly enjoyed it, I didn't predict who the killer was, I loved one of the side characters a whole lot and spent most of the book thinking about her Lexa poster and obsession. All in all, just pretty great and I look forward to Alexa Donne's next work.

This was pretty good. I was really pleased with what happened with Avery's character. The MC being shocked by her coming out was hilarious and very heterosexual of her bc like what straight girl is that obsessed with Lexa?

I will say, the decision to acknowledge COVID-19, but have it be completely and totally over by Fall 2020, no masks, no social distancing, no PTSD, was really jarring. If it's going to be like that, just don't mention it at all. That's okay!!!

Heathers meets 2020 college admission scandal meets How I Got Into College. The Ivies focuses on a group of students attending a boarding school who plot, plan, scheme, and kill to get into the colleges they want. Olivia, the point of view character, would definitely appeal and be relatable to many readers. I must admit, I didn't connect with any of these characters, however, I am not a "modern teenager" and I am sure that teens will find themselves and others within these pages. Overall, a fast read that showcases the lengths some people will go to to get what they want.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Children's for the opportunity to read an advance reader's copy.

I really enjoyed The Ivies! It gave me dark Gossip Girl vibes mixed with Pretty Little Liars and set at a boarding school...OBSESSED. This book follows 5 girls, the Ivies, that all want to go to a different Ivy League school and will let nothing get in their way. My only issue with this novel was how difficult it was to keep track of each girl’s name/school in the first half. I don’t know what the physical book will have but maybe a family tree page in the front of the book, or even a blurb like One of Us is Lying did on the dust jacket, would be helpful.
This had a wonderful blend of mystery and character development that I really liked. There’s also a lot of social commentary on young girls and the pressures they face. These are definitely not your stereotypical ruthless mean girls and you’ll see why when you delve into The Ivies!

Electric thriller about the competitiveness of the Ivy League. I absolutely love this read it was on the edge of my seat until the last page. It’s such a fast paced read. I highly recommend this one.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House Children for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. Wow, what a wild ride! Private school, mean girl group, and a murder which is my bread and butter. I highly recommend that anyone that is a fan of mysteries read this book. Don’t let the fact that is YA deter you from reading this. I read a lot of thriller and mysteries and I still didn’t really know who did it until the reveal. There were twists and turns everywhere! I’m glad that this was my first thriller of 2021!

Teen thrillers are incredibly trendy right now and my students are always looking for new reads that remind them of Karen McManus. This is a perfect read for students who have flown through their library’s section of teen thrillers. Definitely on the mature side but teens will find this fun and unputdownable,

The prestigious Chaflin Academy is a ball of nerves on Early Decision day as the seniors wait to find out if they've been accepted to their dream colleges. Five girls, self-christened "The Ivies," are nervous, too, but maybe not quite as much as everybody else. After all, the Ivies have gamed the system to virtually guarantee that each of them gets a coveted spot at the Ivy League college that Avery, the group's ring leader, has assigned to them. All their scheming and classmate-sabotage is about to pay off...until it doesn't.

Somebody who wasn't even supposed to apply to Harvard gets in. The Ivy who thought she had a Harvard acceptance on speed dial doesn't get accepted. And somebody winds up dead.

Ambitious Olivia is the Ivy who tells this story. As her search for the killer unfolds, she navigates the thorny truths about who she is, who she is to the Ivies, what they've done, and the secrets everyone at school has been hiding. A scholarship student to the boarding school, Olivia has always felt a little "less than" the other Ivies. Always wondered why they chose her, but always went along for fear of going friendless.

I loved the book's combination of heavy characters, the dark realities they struggled with, and the high drama that kept me turning the page. All grounded in the world of high-stakes college admissions, which is fascinating to me as the student I was growing up and the high school teacher I was some years ago.

With all the twists as Olivia weaves in and out of the buildings of Chaflin confronting others and often herself, The Ivies is as much a coming-of-age tale as it is a thriller. All actions have consequences, but they aren't always the ones you'd think, and they certainly aren't always fair. The Ivies each seem to learn this lesson in their own way.

I found the ending very satisfying because everything about the plot is resolved in a believable way, leaving the surviving characters to persist and pursue opportunities, but not unscathed.

My wish list for this book is really just that it was longer so the story could establish the setting as even more of a character and give me a few more one-on-one moments between Olivia and the other Ivies, ESPECIALLY Emma. I found myself wanting to have a more distinct personal sense of Margot and Sierra as well, mainly because I think it would have deepened some of Olivia's inner conflicts and made it harder to discount them as random, mean rich girls.

Highly recommend The Ivies for anyone who likes thrillers and stories about young people working through their problems, sometimes melodramatically (in a good way!).

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5 !

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS BOOK AND I WAS NOT LET DOWN.

Anyone who is a fan of Alexa Donne's YouTube channel knows that her usual fare comes in the vein of soapy, romantic Jane Austen retellings in space. While that is not usually my jam, I bought them all anyway. I think her channel is wonderful and I've enjoyed watching her walk the walk when it comes to applying the concepts she speaks about in her writing, and its been a joy watching her style evolve. What was particularly exciting about 'THE IVIES' is that Alexa is a voracious thriller/suspense fan and this step outside the romance genre was a move that I couldn't wait to see done!

THE IVIES is a YA thriller set in the competitive, cut-throat world of college admissions. Focusing on a group of girls (Avery, Margot, Emma, Sierra, and Olivia) who will do anything, and I mean anything, to gain and keep their coveted spots in the Ivy League schools they chose. They lie, they cheat, they sabotage, and most importantly, they don't get caught. But when the status quo is blown out of the water, fights are had, things are said—and someone ends up dead.

Here, we get to follow Olivia, who has always drifted *just* outside the group known as 'The Ivies. She's not rich, she's not devastatingly pretty, or smart, or talented but she certainly makes up for it in ambition (a fact that I appreciated dearly about her). Olivia can't help but notice that her friends are keeping secrets, but are they deadly? She takes it upon herself to find out.

I've said this about "The Folk of the Air" Series by Holly Black, and I stand by it here: I love a book where not a single person in it is "good". These characters were fleshed out and nuanced. You could not put a concrete label on ANY of them and will find no stereotypes here. That was the beauty. What you think you know, you don't, and in true thriller fashion, I found myself yelling at this book more than once. Alexa managed to pull a successful double-switch that had me cackling. I could see the threads she was weaving, could almost hear her voice describing the concept of how to put a thriller together— but she left just enough ambiguity to make me question myself and I adored every minute of it. (Listen I read a lot of thrillers, I love being duped, especially when it's really so simple.)

The teeny, tiny things that made me pause: Cataldo was by far one of the least useful cops I've ever seen (even though I ended up liking her anyway) and while it pushed Olivia along to do her thing, it seemed a little unrealistic how much she relied on a teenager, but maybe that's just me. There was also a bit of a moment where the book seemed to be grasping at things, taking a little too long to orient itself into moving forward into the investigative phase. Thankfully, this was short-lived, and I can't really blame the book too much: Anyone would be spinning around in circles in that scenario. It just kind of left me wondering where we were going to go from there. This book was chock full of thriller tropes we see every day that some people will enjoy, and others will not. I, personally, had a great time.

Overall? I loved it. I truly did. I wanted to love it, but I came in objectively, and I still was entirely happy with the result. Alexa Donne should ABSOLUTELY write more thrillers (if she wants to) because I'll be the first in line! Keep an eye out cuz THE IVIES hits the shelves 25 May 2021!