Alexa Donne

Enroll in this boarding school thriller about a group of prep school elites who would kill to get into the college of their dreams...literally. "The Plastics meet the Heathers in this murder mystery about ruthless Ivy League ambition." -Kirkus Reviews 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.

The Ivies

The Ivies, five prep school elites who would kill to get into the colleges of their dreams, has a showdown after Liv gets into Harvard and queen bee Avery does not.

raia – inactive

Play the part, try to fit in. Earn their trust. Take their shit. Claw my way up, up, up.

The bright lights butn my eyes. I stare, straight ahead, and don't blink.

"You killed Emma so you could write a fucking college admissions essay?"

"Who picks a cast-iron skillet as a weapon?!"

Avery shrugs. "I didn't want to bring a knife to a gunfight."

"Like who cares about ECs and achievements when two weeks ago I found my friend dead in the rowing pool?"

"I am not a rapist. You've got the age of consent wrong. It's sixteen in Massachusetts."

"Men who memorize age-of-consent laws are big fucking creeps," I hiss.

I am able to deduce one thing from the dick pic: Beau is likely white. I never thought analyzing dick pics would be a life skill I'd develop.

Because hyperelite, competitive college admissions is some serious fucking shit.

Everyone knows the Ivies: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, UPenn, Princeton, Yale.

Courtney Passio

A personal gauge I use to evaluate a good YA murder mystery is that it must include all four elements:

While this was definitely entertaining in a trashy, sort of 2012 CW series-esque media that aired on the weekends way, unfortunately, this book missed all the marks. I went into this book thinking it was about an elite boarding school riddled with comically rich people and their problems but the only thing this gave me was a caricature of cult classics and overall fell short and came off as an extremely shallow replica of already existing media.

lexi

A personal gauge I use to evaluate a good YA murder mystery is that it must include all four elements:

characters written with the intent to be insufferable

a good motive (for the murder)

complicated relationships

good writing

While this was definitely entertaining in a trashy, sort of 2012 CW series-esque media that aired on the weekends way, unfortunately, this book missed all the marks. I went into this book thinking it was about an elite boarding school riddled with comically rich people and their problems but the only thing this gave me was a caricature of cult classics and overall fell short and came off as an extremely shallow replica of already existing media.

Jennifer Gosnell

** spoiler alert **
           A really intriguing mystery about college admissions! I saw a few of the twists coming, but was still guessing about a lot of them. My favourite twist was Avery’s character, actually. I wish we had rounded her out a bit more. I could have used more Avery, hah. I found the end a fitting conclusion. It was a tad heavy-handed at times, but overall a really fun ride.

bye have to study so i can be better than everyone i hate.

shiya

Ellie M.

Gave this 4 ⭐️ solely because I actually enjoyed reading this and it took me out of my slump. 

Mean Girls meets Scream Queens in this YA murder mystery stand alone. I think at this point I worship this genre because it’s one that I actually find exciting and Alexa Donne was the perfect choice of read for me at the moment. I l absolutely loved how chaotic the story and the characters were! This is the picture perfect cliché about a rich kids boarding school and a page turner with its fast-paced writing style with an impeccable drama-filled story escalating from just a
bunch of girls just trying to get into college into blackmail and murder.

britt

fatru tamzil

Murder mistery at school that examines privillege and how broken the education system is. 

MY cup of tea. Yes. Thousand times yes.

isabella

Read this if you loved Good Girl's Guide To Murder. But not expect much.

Lamia Hajani

The Ivies is not the only book that has taken a hard look at the current state of college admissions in the United States, but it does do a better job than most. I expected this one to be similar to Girls with Bright Futures, which it admittedly was, but I thought it was much more compelling.

As a huge fan of Karen M. McManus and Holly Jackson, this book was marketed for readers like myself, and I was not disappointed at all. There are a group of friends and the leader has assigned them their Ivy League school. They do some really not nice things to their competition in their private boarding school. When one of them ends up dead after getting into Harvard (not her assigned school), Olivia, our main narrator, does her own investigation. Olivia is a scholarship student who has never quite fit in with the Ivies.

Donne does a good job of making us not trust a single person. She throws in a complicated romantic situation, and it's honestly well done. I would recommend The Ivies to any YA mystery/thriller lover, like myself! Although some of it is predictable, I was still second-guessing everything until the very, very end.

Claire Durand

I really do love a book that takes place at a boarding school; it just adds an element for me. Is that element the fact that all of the characters are rich? Probably. A little bit far-fetched that it was all because people didn’t get into the school they wanted but that’s fine. I would have actually liked it if it was one of the girls and not just the boyfriend, but unfortunately, at heart, it is a YA mystery. Jealousy is key.

riven

McKenzie McWhorter

I didn't hate this book, I actually really enjoyed reading it but by the end I had several problems with it that I can't look past to give it 4 stars. 
The motive felt a little too out there even for this drama filled book. 
The relationships/friendships between the different characters weren't believable and felt forced even when they weren't supposed to be, most specifically Olivia and Ethan. 
Overall it felt very predictable, I had almost everything figured out before it happened.

Aditi

The characters were fine but the mystery was boring and the book went on for way too long. I didn't really like the writing style either, it felt choppy and kept interrupting the flow of the story.

By the end, it felt too contrived and I'd stopped caring about the main plot about 100 pages before the end. The final part of the story was way too rushed. The last few plot twists were unnecessary. The red herrings were way too obvious and it felt like a drag when I'd already figured out the killer.

isabella t mejias

Beckah brooks

I was given the chance, by NetGalley, to read a digital ARC of The Ivies by Alexa Donne. The cover and synopsis jumped out at me, so I gave it a shot. I mean private school murder mystery, sign me up! Let me preface this review by saying these are all my own thoughts and I definitely will speak my mind. 

With that being said I adored this book! It was exactly what I thought it was going to be. Elite boarding school, group of devious girls, oh yeah, and a murder. If you loved Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson, People Like Us by Dana Mele, or The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas then this is the book for you! I kid you not there was such a good balance of murder mystery, friendship, romance, self-discovery, intense murder-y scenes, scholarship student turned detective, parties, and of course boarding school drama. Everything I look forward to in a YA murder mystery. 

While we are on the topic of murder, the identity of the murder was not easily guessed, at least for me. There were so many twists and turns it was brilliant. Definitely got to a point where I thought it was going to be wrapped up neatly when I noticed I still had many pages left. It was right up until the reveal of the murderer that I finally understood who the killer was. Before that, there were a handful of options that kept me from putting the book down. This is the kind of book you will struggle to put down, you just have to find out what happened!

Now onto my less savory thoughts, though with this book there aren't many. The first thing is that the beginning is quite slow and full of story building/setting the mood. The main character, Olivia, goes on and on about her friends and their dynamic. It was a bit confusing, to say the least. They are The Ives, they each applied to one of the ivy schools and must stick with it. She goes between calling them their names or their school's names. I don't think I remembered her friend's names or the schools they were going to until the 5th chapter.

The other thing I didn't favor was that Olivia felt like she was such a goody-two-shoes and really held herself on a high horse. I would have loved to see her humble herself, but no such luck. Although, these things barely stand to how good the book was. Definitely pick this one up!

kendall p

I was very excited for this release. 
Mystery has been my fav genre recently, especially boarding schools. 
I think this was done really well, and i enjoyed the mystery aspect a lot! I went back and forth on who I thought it was multiple times, and I was very shocked at the ending. 
It really made me sit back and think about how stressful academics can be to someone. 
I recommend!

Great book!! Keeps u on ur toes. A good plot twist, definitely a cannot put down typa book. <3 trust me it’s good

Prisha Bhanushali

Emma M

Omg I loved this book! They’d kill to get in. This book was so good and I loved the murder mystery aspect of it a ton. 

Mary

The narrator and story were very engaging and interesting. I love when narrators have strong biases and opinions that affect how the story is fundamentally told. And Olivia definitely fits the bill. 

The character relationships are excellent and realistic. No one is perfect and neither are their relationships.

I really enjoyed the big twists, but my favorite part was the small details and moments

Would recommend and read again.

Cheryl Hedlund

Being a member of the clique of girls called the Ivies at Claflin Academy means being willing to do whatever it takes to get into your Ivy League university and secure your high flying future. Sabotage, lying, cheating are where it begins. Does it end with murder? Peak behind the curtain of ultra competitive college admissions. It is not pretty or for the faint hearted. The characters get as much attention as the turns of the plot in this young adult thriller. This is an exploration of the friendship dynamics between a group of smart and ambitious mean girls at the top of the social pyramid of a very elite boarding school  There is also a theme of class differences. One unlikely member of the Ivies alliance is a scholarship student who worries about getting a good enough financial aid package to be able to go to her dream school. There is a snarky sarcasm that lightens the tone. This was a quite enjoyable read. 

Ahaana Bhargava

Caitlyn DeRouin

full review here! https://teatimelit.com/2021/05/25/blo...

There are a few things that I think a book absolutely needs to be categorized as a good dark academia mystery/thriller: an unreliable narrator, a gripping mystery with lots of twists and turns, ruthlessly ambitious and morally gray characters, and insane amounts of drama. The Ivies has all of that and then some. 

I was hooked from the first page. In fact, once I started I don’t think I stopped until I was around 60% through, and the only reason I stopped was because I needed to sleep (ugh that pesky thing that gets in the way of reading time). The story was dramatic and over the top and I was addicted. I loved how descriptive the writing was; it was so easy to picture everything that was happening. I felt that the plot twists and reveals were done extremely well. They made sense with the direction the story was headed and there was the right amount of shock factor without it seeming completely out of left field. The plot twists had the desired effect and kept me interested and eager to continue reading. The vibes felt reminiscent of both Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars, two of my favorite teen dramas, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually saw a screen adaptation as the writing also felt very cinematic.

The overall mystery was incredibly thrilling. I liked that it wasn’t super obvious which character was going to die right from the get-go. There were two characters that I thought would be the victim at the start and I flip-flopped on which one of them I thought it would be. I wasn’t completely sure until just before we found out. Once it was revealed, the mystery just kept developing. I definitely found myself putting on my sleuth hat and trying to piece together all of the information. Honestly, I was almost considering starting an online murder board to keep track of all the possible suspects and their motives. There was so much information; the story just kept building and building and when it finally came to a head it all made sense.

Jessica Williamson

4.25 Stars (would be a 4.5, but that cover is MEH)

Well this was a bright shining star in the world of what I've been reading this week! 

This had ALL THE DRAMA! All of it. So many twists and turns and plot maneuvers and I loved every minute of it. 

The characters are annoyingly well done. Everyone is flawed, veeeerrrry few people are just innocent bystanders. It's just a giant group of teens behaving badly and all the shit people will do backstab one another to get into an Ivy league school. It was insane. You know the saying "truth is stranger than fiction"? This felt like reading a true crime novel there was just so much going on and I could not get over everything that was happening.

All the pieces were so perfectly put together and the ways everyone was dirty were just absolutely crazy. This mystery was done so so well. Very happy with this one!

Cover 3; Characters 4; plot 5; pace 5; writing 5; enjoyment 4

haley kendall owen

I think I was not the right demographic for this book. Definitely made for a younger YA audience. A quick, fast-paced read with some twisties thrown in. 

The Ivies

Reviews

Highlights