THE IVY CHRONICLES

When 39-year-old Ivy Ames loses her corporate job, her big-shot husband, Cadman, cheats on her and she's too poor for her pampered Upper East Side lifestyle, she finds herself creating a new life for herself and her two young daughters on New York's exponentially less tony Lower East Side. Ivy hammers out a living helping the city's elite nab spots in the most exclusive private kindergartens in town, but first-time author Quinn's book isn't a feel-good tale about realizing money isn't everything. Even as Ivy comes to understand that her former life among the ultra-rich was absurd and shallow at best, she continues to hope that she'll snag a new husband so rich that she'll never have to work again. Quinn's characters are unapologetically shallow, two-dimensional cartoons designed to affably lampoon the silliness of New York's elite, giving readers ample opportunity to snicker at people like a newspaper mogul willing to pay off the FDA to get her demon child into a "baby Ivy" league kindergarten and other wealthy, overly successful parents who use their kids to channel ambition and perpetuate elitism. It's good fun in small doses, but lengthy exposure to the cotton candy plot and caricaturish characters may leave readers with the zombie-like feeling produced by watching too many reality TV makeovers. Agent, Robin Straus. 5-city author tour. (Jan.)