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    The Chocolate Money
    The Chocolate Money
    The Chocolate Money
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Chocolate Money

    Written by Ashley Prentice Norton

    Narrated by Tavia Gilbert

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Set in 1980s Chicago and on the East Coast, this electric debut chronicles the relationship between an impossibly rich chocolate heiress, Babs Ballentyne, and her sensitive and bookish young daughter, Bettina. Babs plays by no one's rules: naked Christmas cards, lavish theme parties with lewd installations at her Lake Shore Drive penthouse, nocturnal visits from her married lover, who "admires her centerfold" while his wife sleeps at their nearby home.Bettina wants nothing more than to win her mother's affection and approval, both of which prove elusive. When she escapes to an elite New Hampshire prep school, Bettina finds that her unorthodox upbringing makes it difficult to fit in with her peers, one of whom happens to be the son of Babs's lover. As she struggles to forge an identity apart from her mother, Bettina walks a fine line between self-preservation and self-destruction.As funny as it is scandalous, The Chocolate Money is Mommie Dearest, Prep, and 50 Shades of Gray all rolled into one entertaining listen.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateDec 24, 2012
    ISBN9781452681375
    Author

    Ashley Prentice Norton

    ASHLEY PRENTICE NORTON is a graduate of Exeter, Georgetown, and the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Her critically acclaimed first novel, The Chocolate Money, was heralded as "darkly funny . . . compulsively readable" by People. She has also written If You Left, which mirrors the same dark humor. She lives in New York with her husband and three children.

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    Reviews for The Chocolate Money

    3.5/5

    4 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.