by Susie Yang
First published 2020
Ivy Lin learns to steal under her grandmother's guidance in the suburbs outside Boston. She takes small items from yard sales and shops to blend in with her wealthy classmates and catch the eye of Gideon Speyer, whose family holds political power. When her mother catches her stealing, Ivy gets shipped off to China and loses her chance with Gideon. Years pass. Ivy returns to Boston as a polished young woman still carrying the weight of her past. She runs into Gideon's sister Sylvia and sees her opening. Ivy works her way into the Speyer family through elegant dinners and weekend trips to Cape Cod. She gets close to claiming everything she has always wanted. Then someone from her earlier life appears and puts her carefully constructed new identity at risk. Ivy must choose between the perfect life she has built through deception and confronting who she really is.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Boston, China, Cape Cod
Period: present-day
354 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster