{"id":3081,"date":"2023-08-17T15:34:23","date_gmt":"2023-08-17T15:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3081"},"modified":"2023-09-01T21:02:50","modified_gmt":"2023-09-01T21:02:50","slug":"the-last-applicant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3081","title":{"rendered":"The Last Applicant"},"content":{"rendered":"

This novel takes place in the social black hole that sucks in (very) rich New York City parents: admission to the kind of private elementary school that costs the same as college. These institutions usually seem to be named with an eye toward Beatrix Potter characters attending\u2014St. Bernard this, country that. This one\u2019s called Easton but is nevertheless The School to attend. That\u2019s why admissions director Audrey Singer is only surprised by the casual tone of a begging email from a mom who didn\u2019t realize the application pool would be capped. Sarah Price is desperate, devastated, disconsolate, not to mention a little drunk, and fears she has \u201ccompletely derailed\u201d her son, Eli\u2019s, future. Audrey makes the mistake of allowing an exception to the rules, and that\u2019s all it takes: Sarah now begins to stalk the gatekeeper of her dreams for Eli, with her antics growing ever more unhinged as decision day grows closer. Fans of psychological thrillers and mysteries will lap up the tense moments created by the power imbalance between Audrey and Sarah; emotional ups and downs that stem from the women\u2019s private lives add to the roller coaster effect.<\/strong> As the novel is episodic, cliffhangers will thrill readers at points, and there\u2019s a completely unpredictable ending twist. Pick up this one if you enjoyed Chandler Baker\u2019s Cutting Teet<\/a>h or Sylvie Perry\u2019s The Hawthorne School<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This novel takes place in the social black hole that sucks in (very) rich New York City parents: admission to the kind of private elementary school that costs the same…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[52,50,51,53],"class_list":["post-3081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-psychological","tag-suspense","tag-thrillers","tag-women"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Last-Applicant-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Last-Applicant.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}