The Ivy by Lauren Kunze and Rina Onur

The Ivy by Lauren Kunze and Rina Onur
"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?"- summary from Amazon

I'm doing a really good job of picking books out because I keep going back and forth between heavier reads and lighter reads. I love it. Anyway, I really liked The Ivy. I was initially intrigued by it because of the fact that it takes place at college and very few books have that as the setting. It's such a fun setting- more YA books need to take place at college!

Anyway, this is such a laugh-out-loud book; I even read several bits to my roommate because she kept asking me why I was giggling. All of the characters had some great witty moments, but I think Mimi was my favorite of all. The interactions just flowed really well and they were realistic. The dynamics and relationships between the characters were done well too and it was interesting to see those change from beginning to end.

I really enjoyed the little bits from the Harvard magazine and emails at the beginning of each chapter. It was a fun way to include some off-topic stuff without it pulling you out of the story.

Callie was a fun and flawed heroine and even though the book is written in third person, she's clearly the main character, but it's also nice to see other perspectives every so often too. This is one of those books that just made me forget it was in third person. Usually, third person is hard for me because I read so much first person but this story felt like it needed to be told that way, so it didn't bother me.

One thing that did bother me was how there were THREE guys wanting to get with Callie. Love triangles can be hard enough to believe, but THREE guys? It just boggled my mind. Send one my way, Callie. You don't need all of them. And then there isn't a clear bad guy in the bunch; all of them are pretty darn perfect. Which I guess is kind of a good thing since I do hate it when one guy is clearly for the heroine and then the other guy is revealed to be a jerk, but it still seemed unrealistic. I know, you just can't win with me. :P

Another thing that bothered me was this secret that Callie had (it's a spoiler, so I won't say anything, but if you've read the book, email me for my thoughts) and how she chose to handle it. I mean, to me, it just caused unneccessary drama, mainly with one particular person.

Overall, though, it is still a very fun, light read. It's definitely worth a check, and I can't wait to read the sequel.

FTC: Received ARC at BEA (signed!). Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.