Admission by Julie Buxbaum

*Disclosure of material connection- I received a copy of the book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest thoughts. I was not required to write a positive review and all opinions stated are 100% my own. 

About the book-

It's good to be Chloe Wynn Berringer. She's headed off to the college of her dreams. She's going to prom with the boy she's had a crush on since middle school. Her best friend always has her back, and her mom, a B-list Hollywood celebrity, may finally be on her way to the B+ list. It's good to be Chloe Wynn Berringer--at least, it was, until the FBI came knocking on her front door, guns at the ready, and her future went up in smoke. Now her mother is under arrest in a massive college admissions bribery scandal. Chloe, too, might be facing charges, and even time behind bars. The public is furious, the press is rabid, and the US attorney is out for blood.

As she loses everything she's long taken for granted, Chloe must reckon not only with the truth of what happened, but also with the examination of her own guilt. Why did her parents think the only way for her to succeed was to cheat for her? What did she know, and when did she know it? And perhaps most importantly, what does it mean to be complicit?


My thoughts-

I think when the college admissions scam broke, some of us were probably surprised that such a thing could occur, and then others of us were probably thinking that this has probably been going on forever and these were just the people that finally got caught. What I like about the book is the it is from the perspective of the daughters, one in the middle of the scam, and one who has nothing to do with any of it- and what they both are dealing with. I felt a great deal of sympathy for Chloe and I actually felt her character got way more than she deservedd from her so called friends. Yes, I get that she is priviliged and as a result she doesn't always think about how other people might have struggles she has never thought of, but at the same time she kind of does. She is mentor to Cesar, a little boy with way more worries in his little life than Chloe will ever have to deal with and she seems aware of this from the very beginning. The scam seems to help her grow as a person to see even more of the errors of her ways, and yes they shoulld have been angry at her, but I felt like her friends were unsympathetic and unforgiving. Her parents did something very bad, and it is interesting to see through the book how they work through it all both legally and emotionally. I thought it was a great book that I would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys contemporary fiction or young adult novels.