1.61k reviews for:

The Ivies

Alexa Donne

3.64 AVERAGE

bluejaybooks's review

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A fun, page-turning mystery.

loureadz's review

3.0

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cute little YA mystery. nothing tops GGGTM tho.

angay_reads's review against another edition

3.75

funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: N/A

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic friendship, Classism

Minor: Eating disorder, Incest

harleyrae's review

2.0

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2.5/5 Stars

This just fell very flat for me. Not a big fan at all.

barfunkle's review

4.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

amiasmoon's review

3.5

emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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This was an interesting book, to say the least. I’ll start with what I enjoyed first. The theme of the book is very real, people can indeed become entirely focused on their grades, leading them to make morally wrong decisions. I liked Avery. she was a very enjoyable character to me. Olivia was a protagonist I felt neutral about. She wasn’t overly interesting to me. I’ll talk about her more later. I appreciated that she and her love interest didn’t get a happy ending, perhaps because it was one of the few things that surprised me, given all I’ve seen. I really enjoyed the writer’s writing style. I love first-person so much because they immerse me in the story, which she did a great job of. Now, moving on to the aspects I disliked. I was never really interested in the murderer. I already knew the motive—that it was done because Emma wasn’t such a ‘good girl,’ or whatever. So, I didn’t really care who did it. When it was revealed that Emma was dating her professor, I knew he wasn’t the killer. He was the first suspect to me, and I already knew it wasn’t Avery. Even later on, it didn’t feel like Olivia did much to discover that Tyler was the actual killer. The whole subplot about Tyler and Avery dating, but not really, was a silly little gag that annoyed me. I’m pretty sure it was mentioned at the beginning that it’s always the boyfriends, to foreshadow, but like, yeah, it is always the boyfriends. And that gets pretty boring after a while. Olivia felt like she had no character development at all. She kept saying that she was desperate for the Ivies’ validation the entire time, but I didn’t feel like it was portrayed effectively. Despite all my criticism, I feel like this is still a solid piece of work. I may tune into some of her future work if something excites me. Ty for reading my rant

yuelia_lyr's review against another edition

3.5

mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

ikler's review

5.0

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

mnoreads's review against another edition

3.0

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

hawkeye_hawkins's review

3.5

medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No