Small Admissions

September 12, 2016
The focus in Poeppel’s quick-witted debut novel is on elite private school admissions. Kate Pearson is a sharp yet aimless young woman a couple of years out of Wellesley, struggling to recover from a disastrous breakup. Her helicopter sister, Angela, gets her a job interview, which is a comical nightmare for Kate and her prospective boss. Surprisingly—to both of them—he hires her to be in charge of admissions at Manhattan’s prestigious Hudson Day School. Poeppel’s novel
follows Kate’s journey from hot mess to self-actualizing grown-up, while detailing the campaigns for admission of a small group of students and their families. Some rise to the challenge, but one fails miserably. The novel is also about friendship and family, and the author gently satirizes hippie academics through Kate’s parents, whose nontraditional take on child rearing contributed in no small part to Angela’s tightly wound demeanor. Rounding out the cast are Kate’s two best friends: Chloe, who goes to extreme, humorous lengths to find Kate a boyfriend, and Vicki, who tries to manipulate the situation to her advantage. With so many strong personalities and disparate threads, Kate and her story might easily have gotten lost, but the author, like a circus ringmaster, points attention here and there, always bringing it back to the center. An excellent debut.

November 1, 2016

Bright, ambitious Wellesley grad Kate Pearson is a woman whose life has gone off the rails. Following a disastrous breakup that annihilated both her relationship and planned move to Paris, she is back in New York filling her days (and nights) with bon-bons, sweatpants, and reruns of Sex and the City. Despite the best efforts of her sister Angela and BFFs Chloe and Vicki, Kate can't get off the couch until, against all odds, she lands a job in admissions at the prestigious Hudson Day School. There's no time for self-pity in her new position as Kate plunges right into the "dark time," as her colleagues describe the admissions season, and a sea of oddball applicants and their crazy parents. VERDICT Debut author Poeppel, who did a stint as an admissions officer, gives us an inside peek into the selection process at an elite prep school. The result is a witty and captivating page-turner punctuated with quirky characters and laugh-out-loud moments that are sure to appeal to chick lit lovers of the Marian Keyes/Jennifer Weiner/Susan Isaacs variety. [See Prepub Alert, 6/13/16.]--Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.