ARC Review: The Ivies by Alexa Donne

Review by: Paige

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ .5

I received an advanced copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. Thank you so much to Crown Books for Young Readers for providing this galley!

Publication: May 25, 2021

Genre: Young Adult, Mystery, Thriller

Synopsis: They’d kill to get in.

Everyone knows the Ivies: the most coveted universities in the United States. Far more important are the Ivies. The Ivies at Claflin Academy, that is. Five girls with the same mission: to get into the Ivy League by any means necessary. I would know. I’m one of them. We disrupt class ranks, club leaderships, and academic competitions…among other things. We improve our own odds by decreasing the fortunes of others. Because hyper-elite competitive college admissions is serious business. And in some cases, it’s deadly.

Alexa Donne delivers a nail-biting and timely thriller about teens who will stop at nothing to get into the college of their dreams. Too bad no one told them murder isn’t an extracurricular.

Review: At this point, my love for the boarding school murder mystery novel seriously needs no introduction. But I am still reeling from being able to get my hands on The Ivies early because this was by far one of my most anticipated reads of the entire year, and when I tell you it blew me away, I mean it.

For as much as I read these books for sheer pleasure, I also read them because I have spent essentially my entire life entrenched in elite education systems. Not boarding high school, no, but a lifetime of private school then public high school in a very privileged area and then an expensive and elite small liberal arts college. And now I’m considering a whole ass Ph.D. I’ve never really known my life outside of some form of the ivory tower, so when YA started to interrogate and reveal its rotten roots, I ate it up. I continue to eat it up. I don’t just love the murder and mayhem—I’m here for the inherent sociopolitical commentary. And no one has delivered on it as well as Alexa Donne has.

I thank Donne’s history as a private college admissions essay consultant for much of the brilliance of this novel. She has seen, firsthand, what wealth and privilege can do in college admissions; she has borne witness to the bloodbath. Of all the YA boarding school murder mystery novels I have read, this is the only one that I’ve seen deal comprehensively and consistently with the pervasive issue of class. It’s the foundation for these novels, yet too often writers shy away from dealing with it (and the racial, political, and socioeconomic issues that naturally come alongside it). While I remain endlessly tired of the “scholarship kid” protagonist and hope authors begin to look for ways to tell these stories without relying on some kind of “Other,” I’m glad Donne made you actively deal with and confront Olivia’s Other-ized status throughout the entire novel. That’s far more than many have done in the past.

While I can’t give anything away about the crime and the mystery, of course, Donne built on that expansive critique of the system with a scathing and uncomfortably realistic killer reveal, if one a bit rushed. This novel did not just address privilege as a force in the background—it was at the heart of the crime itself. As it should be, and is.

This novel was standard in many ways, but at no point not intriguing. It kept you hooked. I loved how realistically, accurately nasty The Ivies got with each other, that there was no reliance on some decades-long secret society type plot but just five ruthless and seemingly untouchable girls. I loved watching the mystery unfold, and though it relied on some of the tropes we want, need, and expect, it was still so good and solid. The one thing I hated? It kept bringing up COVID-19, which I think had no place here. It took you out of the insidious timelessness of the boarding school setting and mention of it will age and place this novel in a strange, unnecessary way. Also, can’t we all just get some entertainment without the need for random mention of COVID in works to come, please?

Overall, I am just simply in the palm of this book’s hands and I cannot wait to see what Donne does next and for years to come. I hope authors of these types of novels in the future will take serious notes.