ARC Book Tour & Book Review: The Ivy

Author: Lauren Kunze & Rina Onur
Title: The Ivy
Publisher: Green Willow
Publish Date: Aug 31, 2010
Rating: 2 Stars
Book Blurb: Congratulations! You have been admitted to the most prestigious university in the world. Now what are you going to do?
Callie Andrews may not have money or connections or the right clothes, and she may have way too many complications in her love life, what with Gregory the guy she loves to hate ...

Evan the guy she'd love to forget ...

Clint  the guy she'd love to love ...

and Matt the guy she really should love ...

all vying for her attention.

But she has three fantastic roommates (best friends or her worst nightmare?) and a wholesome California-girl reputation (oops) and brains and beauty and big, big dreams.

Will it be enough to help her survive freshman year at Harvard?


Review: This is the kind of book I had every intention of loving, however no matter what I did, I couldn't love it. It reminded me of why I never liked the snotty schools like Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.

Too much snobbery.

I actually perferred the more obnoxious characters in this book to Callie, who was a bit boring, and who almost always got what she wanted. Almost.

Alexis Thorndike is the upper classman who makes Callie's life hell, and truthfully, Callie deserves it.  She makes off with her boyfriend and then some in the typical, sweet little girl from California sort of way, even though she's not from "Money" or "Power." It is really hard to see why any of the guys would like Callie, as she's pretty vapid for someone supposedly smart. 



I wish the book would have shifted focus more to some of her roommate. Vanessa, Mimi and Dana had the potential to be very interesting, but we don't get a whole lot about them, or at least enough to make the reader care.

What you do get is a book about snotty rich kids, that aren't really at Harvard to learn. In fact, it is pretty hard to figure out what they are at Harvard for.  It's kind of like Gossip Girl goes to college only with less interesting characters.

The highlights in the book that make it worth reading are Alexis' advice columns from Fifteen Minutes. Other than that, this book is rather dull fluff. The only plus is all the bad stuff that happens to Callie at the end of the book. That may make me want to read the next book in the series, or maybe not.