From the bestselling author of Vacationland comes a novel that perfectly captures the mania of the college admissions process as a seemingly perfect family comes undone by a few desperate measures, a long-buried secret -- and a teenage girl's application to Harvard.

"A fun, fast-paced, completely engrossing tale of a California family trying to get their eldest daughter into Harvard... Brilliant and enjoyable on every level." -- Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author of 28 Summers

The Hawthorne family has it all: great jobs, a beautiful house in one of the most affluent areas of northern California, and three charming kids with perfectly straight teeth. Then comes eldest daughter Angela's senior year of high school.

Suddenly, everyone is floundering. As Angela writes and rewrites her application for Harvard -- her father's alma mater -- and struggles to maintain her position as valedictorian, Nora Hawthorne's career hits a rough patch, taking her away from a newly distracted husband and uncharacteristically anxious younger daughters. And as the secrets everyone has been keeping will come to light, it sets the family on a final collision course that will force them to reevaluate, with humor and heart, the value of achievement.

• We started tracking this book on February 11, 2015.
• This book was $12.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 127 times in the past 3,730 days.
• The current price of this book is $4.99 last checked 8 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past six months.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $2.99.
• The lowest price to date was $1.99 last reached on July 30, 2023.
• This book has been $1.99 4 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on March 18, 2025.
• This book has been $14.99 3 times since we started tracking it.

• Literature & FictionGenre FictionComing of Age
• Literature & FictionLiterary FictionLiterary

• Publication Date: August 18, 2015
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 379 Pages
• File Size: 26 KB