Do not read The Ivy Chronicles. I'm serious. Please. Don't. It's just...it has the bones of being a really amusing fast read, it truly does. But it's awful. The characters are plastic, the protagonist is completely unsympathetic, and while the basic plot (spurned wife finds new career) is believable, there are just too many things that are over-the-top to let me enjoy it.

Ivy gets let go from her job at a bank, getting fucked over by a co-worker and her boss in the process. She comes home to find her unemployed husband (not at all coincidentally named "Cad") and her co-worker's wife naked in the bathroom. Woe! She has to downsize! And wait in line to sign her kids up for a charter school! She accidentally hits upon the idea of advising parents on getting their children into the "right" kindergarten, and immediately finds a stable of stereotypes to help through admissions. Along the way, she gets bribed, threatened, makes out with George Clooney (thanks to a rich buddy), shows herself to be an unrepentant name-dropping fat-phobic snob, and naturally, cannot decide between two of her neighbors, both of whom are completely fascinated by her. Of course.

Along the way there is a school shooting, a bribery scandal, and--oh yes!--a psychic meeting with her ex co-worker. Why was it a psychic meeting? BECAUSE HE WAS EATEN BY CROCODILES WHILE ON A RETREAT. (The guy who fired her survived, albeit with half his face eaten off.)

Come on. I love me some tidy resolutions, especially when there is a spectacular comeuppance, but eaten by crocodiles is ridiculous. Judith Krantz couldn't have done it well. And the sex scenes would have been better, to boot.

The really sad thing? If she did a sequel about the rich buddy, I'd read it. The rich buddy only got that way because she married some squazillionaire, but she seems really down-to-earth, and is in general a much more approachable and sympathetic character than Ivy. She's almost have to be, though; Ivy is fairly loathsome. I almost felt more sorry for Mrs. X from The Nanny Diaries. There's also a lot of condescending fuckwaddery involving a housekeeper whom she's shepherding through the admissions process; this would be a redeeming quality if not for all the smug back-patting that goes along with it.

It is entirely possible that I just didn't get it and the book is a rilly rilly cutting satire. But somehow, I don't think so. Which is a shame. There's a good book in there somewhere. Maybe someone else can find it. I haven't the strength.

Crocodiles. For the love of god.