Excerpt from White Ivy by Susie Yang, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Her first conquests: tampons, lip gloss, a box of Valentine's Day cards, a bag of disposable razors. Later, when she became bolder: rubber sandals, a sports bra, mascara, an aquamarine mood ring, and her most prized theft yet—a leather-bound diary with a gold clasp lock. These contrabands she hid in the nooks and crannies of her dresser, away from puritan eyes. At night, Ivy would sneak out her diary and copy beautiful phrases from her novels—For things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal—and throughout those last two years of middle school, she wrote love letters to Gideon Speyer: I had a vivid dream this morning, it was so passionate I woke up with an ache… I held your face in my hands and trembled… if only I wasn't so scared of getting close to you… if only you weren't so perfect in every way…

And so Ivy grew like a wayward branch. Planted to the same root as her family but reaching for something beyond their grasp. Years of reconciling her grandmother's teachings with her American values had somehow culminated in a confused but firm belief that in order to become the "good," ting hua girl everyone asked of her, she had to use "smart" methods. But she never admitted how much she enjoyed these methods. She never got too greedy. She never got sloppy. And most important, she never got caught. It comforted her to think that even if she were accused of wrongdoing someday, it would be her accuser's word against hers—and if there was anything she prided herself on other than being a thief, it was being a first-rate liar.

Excerpted from White Ivy by Susie Yang. Copyright © 2020 by Susie Yang. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.