WHITE IVY

Reconnecting with her grade school crush isn’t quite the fairy tale Ivy Lin had hoped for.

Ivy's parents moved to the U.S. from China when she was only 2, leaving her in the care of her maternal grandmother, Meifeng. At 5, she flew to Massachusetts to live with her parents and new baby brother, Austin. When Meifing, a prolific petty thief, followed a few years later, she taught Ivy the tricks of the trade and the fine art of deception. Ivy’s childhood wasn’t particularly happy. She didn’t fit in and constantly felt that she would have “traded her face a thousand times over for a blue-eyed, blond-haired version…instead of her own Chinese one with its too-thin lips, embarrassingly high forehead, two fleshy cheeks like ripe apples before the autumn pickings.” Her insecurities weren’t helped by her mother, a bitter woman whose vicious mean streak was usually aimed at her daughter. A big reader, Ivy turned inward and fantasized about her future. Now, Ivy is a decidedly unfulfilled first grade teacher in Boston. When she happens to run into Sylvia Speyer, the sister of her childhood crush, Gideon, Ivy is propelled into the orbit of Gideon’s wealthy family—and into Gideon’s heart. She’s especially thrilled when Gideon finally invites her to Finn Oaks, his family’s summer cottage on the New England coast. Ivy senses a new distance between her and Gideon, though, and when blast-from-her-past Roux Roman appears, she’s afraid his knowledge of her dirty secrets may threaten her new status, even as he stirs a dark desire within her that will lead her to a shocking act. The intelligent, yearning, broken, and deeply insecure Ivy will enthrall readers, and Yang’s beautifully written novel ably mines the complexities of class and privilege.

A sophisticated and darkly glittering gem of a debut.