December 14, 2009
Stabiner (The Empty Nest
), known for her books on parenting, has written a novel about five families with children applying to college that’s as arduous and tedious as the actual application process. The Harvard legacy fourth-generation child who secretly wants to be an architect and ditch applying to the top school, the girl whose B+ has damned her to look just below the Ivies, and the financially struggling immigrants’ daughter with a perfect SAT score whose sights are set on Harvard and nowhere else are among the teens and their overzealous parents fully focused on the prize or confused about their future in Stabiner’s stuffy and boring study. There is no real desire to care for these characters and too much time spent setting the scene, thereby blurring the focus of the story. Getting into college may have its challenges, but reading this book is one test best left undone.