This is a tough book to rate, I give it three stars but with some needed explanation. The book The Chocolate Money is part of a new class of books being written by female authors. It almost seems that the goal of these books is to prove that females can be just as trashy and sexually perverse as men. I am not sure this is something to aspire to. In this case the story- what little there is of one, is about a woman named Babs who is obscenely wealthy, who mentally acts like a perverted 16 year old boy, and who even worse has a daughter (Bettina) who she is raising on her own. Babs has no boundaries when it comes to her behavior in front of her daughter or discussions about oral sex with her 11 year old.
The real problem with the book is that once you get past the shock factor somewhere around the second chapter you realize there is really no story. Yes it jumps ahead to Bettina going to a exclusive boarding school, but you know what will happen and predictably it does, you can figure even how the book will end except by then you really don't care, I at least kept hoping to see the daughter have a Lindsey Lohan type meltdown. The author is just as pretentious as the Babs character in the book I base this on the picture of the author on the fly leaf of the book, as well as her educational background, and lastly because of the acknowledgements page where she lists her husband, her three trendy named kids and their nanny.
So why three stars? Because it is more acceptable to read this book,at say the pool compared to the best of Penthouse letters- it is after all funny. But I hope that this author as well as the author of Tampa- a book I loathed- figure out how to write a book with a plot, a storyline, and maybe interesting characters rather than continuing to to write edgy porn for soccer moms or their nannies. ( )

Okay wow. It took me a bit to get into this book. It was crude, almost shockingly so, in the beginning, and I started to think it was more 50 Shades than Prep (which is what drew me in in the first place) However, when Bettina moves into her boarding school... HUZZAH. Sometimes the experiences were similar to Prep, but nothing too jarring; this is where the book really hits its stride. Besides the rough sex with Jake, which yeah, I understood the point it made in the character development but really? 15 year olds routinely dabble in autoerotic asphyxiation and smatterings of BDSM? Methinks no, it hooked me and I had to finish. The ending was... Rushed a bit, but overall, I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Could use some edits, but a solid debut. Oh man, I can't wait to see what everyone else thinks. This seems like one of those books that you either LOVE or detest. 3.5 stars. ( )

Whiny poor little rich girl MC plus a whiny-sounding narrator equals I just can't.

Coming of age tale of young upper crust girl from Chicago, Bettina, and her attempt to make sense of her relationship with her eccentric self-indulgent mother. For me, the book was a cynical less hopeful take on Wilt Stillman territory. There was an earnestness and frankness to the book which appealed to me. I found it to be a page turner. ( )