Book Review--School of Fortune, by Amanda Brown and Janice Weber

Pippa Walker's mother has spent the last six months attending to every last detail of her daughter's wedding. She has spared no expense. She even held a mini-beauty contest among Pippa's friends in order to select ten perfect bridesmaids and three alternates, all of whom had to sign contracts agreeing to stay slim and beautiful. And how does Pippa repay her? By backing out of the wedding at the last minute.

Pippa has a really good reason to back out, but to protect her ex-fiance, she keeps it to herself. Her enraged mother disinherits her. Her father never stands up to her mother.

But Pippa can get her own share of the family fortune. Her grandfather provided for her through his will. The only thing is, she needs to get a diploma from a school (ANY school) to receive the bulk of his estate. She will receive an allowance of $60,000 a MONTH while she is in school.

Now personally, if this were my situation, I would have sucked it up, re-enrolled in college, and worked toward getting a college degree. I figure I could probably have managed to survive on $60,000 a month, given that I still don't make that much in a year, even after being out of graduate school for several years now and having earned two graduate degrees.

But Pippa takes advantage of the fact that the wording in her grandfather's will was rather vague, and she figures she will just get a diploma from a school less, shall we say, taxing, than college. She starts with driving school, then moves on to matchmaking school, then an extremely alarming circus academy, of all things. But it isn't until she enrolls in the Mountbatten-Savoy School of Household Management that things finally begin to turn around for Pippa--both school-wise and in finding true love.

This is a hilarious book. Pippa's world (or at least, the world from which she has recently been expelled) is populated be ridiculously rich individuals, and the authors do a great job of making fun of them. The schools Pippa attends are also full of extremely interesting and hilarious people, and I laughed out loud in reading about her misadventures in trying to earn a diploma.