This is another book I had requested to review and then promptly forgot what is was about.
I honestly kept waiting for something to happen. The actual big thing that tears apart the two main characters is somewhat of a letdown - I would have thought that any of the previous issues would have been the breaking point. I guess it's meant to show that both girls are able to be bought and give up their principles.
If we are meant to hate Emery and pity Lilah, then the author succeeds. I feel at the end that the roles are supposedly reversed, but they really aren't. Emery still has the power and Lilah has to give in to ensure her future.
My kids attend a private high school like Derrymore and we live amongst people that do send their kids to boarding schools like this and have comparable wealth and power. I know we are privileged to afford this, but I identify greatly with Lilah...caught in a world that we don't belong in because we are definitely bottom-earners at this school but know our best chances for our future lie in this viper's nest.
Maybe this book made me feel too many feels. I think the mentions of the Simple Life reality show are apt, as the show depicts clueless, ignorant rich girls, much like many of the characters in this book. I did like the slight throwback to earlier years of the 2000's; granted I was already married and a parent by then, but I liked the pop culture references.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley.

An intriguing and wryly funny examination of the nuances of privilege and the world of prep schools and competitive college admissions.

Nothing we haven’t seen before on a basic level, but this is a bit of a unique take on the subject, well written, and far more original than most novels in this subgenre in terms of how the story unfolds.

Fair warning: If you’re one of those people who loves eat the rich novels, this probably won’t satisfy you if you’re looking for a specific outcome common to that type of story. Sanibel has actually made a far more astute and clever commentary here on the privilege of wealth, but it seems to be upsetting some reviewers who clearly wanted something more typical to the theme.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is that Lilah is not actually our typical “poor kid among the rich” hero. She’s sycophantic until she can’t take it any more, but what she does after that doesn’t make her likable or even sympathetic. It’s an interesting spin on the idea that too often, when on what we perceive to be a righteous mission, we end up becoming too much like the thing we seek to defeat.

The fact that neither of the protagonists turns out to be someone you particularly want to root for may make this a tough read for those who require a hero of sorts, but I actually thought what Sanibel does with her characters here was far more interesting, and perhaps an astute observation that terrible environments often bring out our most terrible selves.

I’ll be honest and say that what happened here was not my prep school experience not that of my kids’, but there’s enough there that is reminiscent of real world experience that I’m buying the concept, and it’s both refreshing and edifying to see this situation through the eye of non-white characters.

This is one of the best explorations of the adolescent girl psyche that I've read in a long time. While I have no experience at a fancy boarding school, I certainly have experience being a teenaged girl. The layers of this book are really lovely. The way class and race plays throughout this book are really fascinating, but at it's core this book just perfectly reflects the intricate and changeable relationships girls have through high school. This book is also truly funny in it's own sardonic way. This is a book about character and relationships, not plot, and it does it's job extremely well. I really liked it.

(Actual: 3.75⭐, rounded up) Another pleasant surprise this year! I really did enjoy this book for what it was, but won't lie in saying that I expected a bit more? However, with that disclaimer being made, let's talk about the good first: Loved the academic setting (yay to more ~dark academia vibes!; the twists, turns, and backstabbing antics amongst friends (frenemies?); and the way in which Sanibel wove in all the casual, sickening acts of racism people do or say in such a way that yes, should make you/readers feel uncomfortable.... but I also think that's the point. In terms of execution, I think Sanibel knocked that particular section out of the park, while also handling the subject with grace and care. While marketed as general fiction, TO HAVE AND HAVE MORE has a distinct YA feel to it at times and, while not necessarily a bad thing, it is something worth nothing. In a way, however, as I write this review, I'm starting to feel more like the YA tone is more positive in that it makes the topics and plot points at hand easily accessible and relatable to a variety of ages. Regardless, I liked this book a lot and would definitely recommend it out to others!

Does having a lot of money absolve a person of all responsibility? This book had some amusing, snarky comments in the midst of rudeness and entitlement. Does being rich include the privilege of being insincere, catty and looking out for #1? Apparently, t does.
Emery Hooper was adopted into a wealthy American family as a baby, right off the streets of Korea. Her adoptive parents have the means to spoil her rotten. Everything is a competition and a quest for power in relationships.
Set at Derrymore Academy, where the young students live in dorms, and their fellow students and "friends" are pawns in their game of using people in a quest for superior standing and enhanced regard by their peers ,and maybe a crumb here and there, is there anyone to intervene in their world of manipulation, snarky comments, backstabbing, and self advancement? They seem to enjoy their actions, which lack accountability.
Emery's parents have positioned her at the top of the wealth pyramid, but she is about to find out about the things that really matter. Will they matter to her in her entitled world? She knows nothing about the mores and practices of Korea because she was adopted so young.
Will her slightly plump friend pull her out of her desire for more and instill a sense of decency in Emory. After all, money and access to to it can bring unlimited power and possessions.
The teens at Derrymore are not nice people for the most part. They prank each other, and can never be nice to anyone without hurting others. Emory is way out there.
Money isn't everything, and when you have learned to achieve and get more because of Daddy's money, does it matter how you treat other people? I couldn't stop reading! I liked it, which surprised me, because so many of these people were really not very likeable.
The social commentary shows the as they are, warts and all, but I found myself not caring about these entitled kids as they hurt others. The satire is rich, but the way they comported themselves bothered me..

Thank you to the publisher and author for giving me a copy of the ARC. All opinions are my own.

An unlikely friendship blossoms between two girls at an elite prep school.
Korean-born Emery is the adopted, only child of a wealthy, influential, white couple, who have raised Emery to have and believe she deserves the best of everything. Now in high school, Emery expects to retain her lifelong role of Queen Bee. Lilah is the only child of working class Taiwanese immigrant parents, who have put all of their expectations of achieving the American dream squarely on her shoulders. Quiet and timid, she's accepted her fate as invisible.
While the two girls come from opposite backgrounds and run in completely different social circles, they are part of a very small group of Asian students among a sea of rich white faces, helping the girls bond over their shared experiences, and the micro aggressive insults constantly directed their way.
As their friendship deepens, Lilah grows in confidence and leadership, while Emery...doesn't.
Very entertaining, even as the ending was kinda just sad but expected.
Thanks to #netgalley and #8thnotepress for this #arc of #tohaveandhavemore by #sanibel in exchange for an honest review.

There’s no such thing as a nice rich kid.

These opening words are the thoughts of 14-year-old Emery Hooper, freshman at the prestigious Derrymore Academy. Emery knows of what she speaks – adopted from Korea as an infant, she’s the cossetted only child of very wealthy parents. At Derrymore she’s surrounded by kids she’s known her whole life. And no, none of them are very nice.

Lilah tries out for Derrymore’s tennis team and quickly meets her enemy/rival/friend-to-be: Lilah Chang. Lilah is Tawainese-American, the daughter of middle-class immigrant parents who have strived and sacrificed to set Lilah up for academic success. Their sacrifices come with high expectations, though.

Emery, polished and self-assured (at least outwardly) immediately despises the awkward, dorky and slightly overweight Lilah. Lilah has a group of friends, all Taiwanese-American, but gravitates towards Emery despite Emery’s obvious disdain for her. Part of Emery’s dislike is based on a fear of being lumped in with the other Asian kids at the school; the idea of this threatens the story she tells herself about being (and being seen as) no different from her wealthy white peers.

Friendships at Derrymore are transactional and fraught with undercurrents of rivalry. Emery’s closest friends are Candace, who she’s known forever (Candace’s dad worked for Emery’s dad) and Noah, who is middle-class and sycophantic. It’s not just among the wealthy kids that unhealthy relationships flourish – Lilah’s friend group, derisively called the quadruplets by Emery and others, is dominated by Annie, who seems to have an inexplicable hatred for Lilah though they have known each other most of their lives and are ostensibly friends.

Emery plays a mean prank on Lilah, and her guilt over that leads to her softening a bit. This sets the tone for Emery and Lilah’s four years at Derrymore – a push away/pull towards, mirroring, in some ways, Emery’s consciousness of her privilege and the limits to it in her world. She eventually takes Lilah under her wing and makes her cool-adjacent, at least – loaning her clothes and makeup and folding her into her friend group.

But Emery can’t protect Lilah from micro- and macro-aggressions, any more than she can protect herself. The boys in their class think it’s funny to initiate a “Hug an Asian Day” and get angry when Emery takes offense on Lilah’s part. Emery has enough pull as an honorary white not to be subjected to the harassment, but she isn’t at all immune to the racism baked into the bricks of Derrymore: she has a run-in with a teacher who specifically wants Emery’s take on Korean “comfort women” in World War II, a confrontation that doesn’t end well for the teacher when the Hooper money speaks. Emery’s parents tend to be very anxious around any perception of racism against Emery, cushioning her rather than preparing her for the real world.

A blurb calls this book “darkly funny” but I didn’t feel quite on the same wavelength as the humor. Not only are most of the teen characters kind of awful in one way or another, the parents are, at the very least, highly flawed – Emery’s parents are snobby and overly concerned with her maintaining her precise place in society, and Lilah’s parents (and some of the other Asian parents depicted in passing) are hyper-critical and obsessed with image, in a different way than the white parents. Annie’s mother, for instance, urges her to continue to use skin-bleaching creams that burn her face, so she can look more like Lilah. “So white. So pretty.” (To be fair, Lilah’s parents appear more in the book than any other adults, and the reader does get a deeper sense of them as people; they certainly aren’t bad people.)

Emery and Lilah’s on-and-off friendship takes a turn towards “off” as tensions rise. Lilah founds a student magazine that examines some of Derrymore’s shortcomings, and her resulting not-Emery-engineered popularity makes Emery jealous, a heretofore unknown dynamic in their relationship. Emery spends the summer before senior year working with a tutor on her college application essay – the pressure to find some challenge that she has overcome to write about makes Emery deeply uncomfortable. She’s aware that nothing in her privileged life qualifies, but at the same time she can’t bring herself to really examine some of the challenges she’s faced as a transracial adoptee in a very white world.

The ending was, for me, unexpectedly bitter and cynical. It was sad because there were real moments of connection between Lilah and Emery – Emery spends one summer with Lilah and her parents in Taiwan, and she becomes, for a short time, a better person (which is not to say that the dynamic is Lilah=good, Emery=bad; just that her flaws were well mitigated by being exposed to Lilah’s world). Lilah, too, allows herself to manifest four years worth of resentment towards Emery. Early in the book Lilah is strangely passive about Emery’s treatment of her, but by the end she convinces herself that Emery has wronged her and used her for their entire time at Derrymore. To be fair, Emery does betray Lilah’s trust but it almost feels like Lilah is looking for a reason to break with Emery once and for all.

My overall grade for this was a B – if I didn’t connect with it on every level, I did find it really readable and think it had some smart things to say about the world that Emery and Lilah inhabit. I will definitely keep an eye out for future works by the author.

I really struggled to get through this. I understood and admired what the author was doing and the themes explored. Class divides, privilege, wealth, the Korean American experience, racism, high school struggles, fitting in. But the writing felt so choppy and didn't flow for me. There was a lot of redundancy concerning wealth and lots of specific little details that made it feel like it was dragging on. I didn't like any of the characters or feel anything towards them. They felt more like caricatures, than dynamic characters. This one just wasn't for me.

I’m just not totally sure what to say about this book. It was more simplistic than I was hoping for, with less of the scandal and intrigue that you usually get from the genre of boarding school books. The characters were intriguing and I liked that it explored the different ways the girls were treated and the opportunities they had based on their backgrounds prior to Derrymore. I think I needed a little more from the supportive characters and the administration at the school. We started off strong with the tennis team but that faded into the background pretty quickly. I just felt like the Emery/Lilah relationship wasn’t quite enough to sustain it all.

Unfortunately, this was a DNF for me. The writing style was just not my cup of tea. I made a stronger attempt and reached 42%, but I had to call it quits. I enjoyed the premise of the book, though, just wish the execution had been better.

I enjoyed this but I'm not sure I'll remember it a few weeks from now.
I love what Sanibel was going for and this is def a needed take...just not as polished as I'd have liked.

Thank you bunches to Sanibel, Zando, 8th Note Press and NetGalley for the DRC in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

If you need some comedy... that is incredibly dark humor, this is the book! This one is a very quick read and it's witty, and shocking, and brave, and just so much more - it's really well done.

The beginning of this book had me just completely turned off from the racism and how casual it is thrown out. It really made me feel uncomfortable, especially as I realized just how significant it really is because it occurs for so many people. Just this like passive non-direct racism from other peoples biases. It really helped me to actually think about it!

I love Emery and Lilah and how REAL they are... because we've all been there, or we've known people that are like them. I really just loved this book and think that it needs to be on everyones radar. This would be extremely good for a book club as well!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this title. I enjoyed this book as a break between weightier stuff. Not that it doesn't deal with big issues--race, privilege, teenage awkwardness and angst to name a few.

The author's writing style is easy to read and follow and her characters are distinct, although a bit stereotyped in general. I did care about them and was glad that the poor, fat, ugly girl found acceptance (of course she did--after she lost weight). Nothing really wrong with the novel, but nothing very unique about it either, except that it does use Asian characters in new ways--not just the funny sidekick, but a main character.

This book reads as YA to me - set in a wealthy, high school-boarding school. The main characters are dealing with the ways that racism and class intersect. One main character is a young Korean woman who was adopted by extremely rich, white parents. Another character is a Chinese-American scholarship student, with immigrant parents. Finally, rounding out the potential intersections, is a third character who has wealthy Korean parents. She has both status and parents with the same lineage. Each of the girls navigates these challenges in various ways, trying to fit in, trying to embrace their culture, even avoiding each other at times out of a fear of being seen as too Asian.

The themes explored here are important and well-written. But, I found myself getting bored with the teen drama and the true lack of plot. It's a lot of rich kids being insufferable and not much else. If you enjoy shows like Gossip Girl, which this book has been compared to a lot, then you might enjoy this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC!

I love the idea and concept of this book and I appreciate what the author tried to do and still the first half was a bit redundant and the unkindnesses, although very realistic in their portrayal, were heartbreaking to read and almost cloying. Sanibel's ability to understand humanity doesn't always make for the most smooth reading journey. It's out of the ballpark in concept and pretty meh in delivery.

To Have and Have More features transracial adoption and the ways in which our identity is formed. There's these layers of Otherness which we feel even in our own homes. The ways our extended family reminds us of our appearance, the off handed comments, the micro aggressions. It made me remember growing up and things I brushed off and ways I felt in and out of place simultaneously. How we don't know how to apply eyeliner. For Emery, meeting Lilah causes these issues, these hidden moments, to come to the surface, and she isn't sure she likes it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC

I can see why everyone is comparing this to Gossip Girl or The Clique, but this is much more self aware and interesting

Everyone’s likable (mostly) while also all being unlikable. Had to read this in bits and pieces because the secondhand uncomfortableness was incredibly strong at times

3.5 stars.

I loved the premise of this book and it started out like a very promising read. I loved how the author used a lot of stereotypes to portray racism and privilege. It started going down for me at around 60%, I just felt like it started to become predictable and the ending felt very flat. I wished the author had taken a few more risks with this one.

Thank you to the publisher and author for providing a free copy of this book through NetGalley.

Thanks to NetGalley and 8th Note Press for the advanced reader copy.

I often love a "rich people's problem" book and am a fan of campus novels, so I thought TO HAVE AND HAVE MORE would be right up my alley. The characters were sufficiently messy and complex, but about halfway through it became clear that the story wasn't really headed anywhere. Emery and Lilah develop a tentative friendship as outsiders, racially, but the story itself plateaus and lost steam.

This book has been described as a boarding school Gossip Girl, and it definitely has those vibes but also is more nuanced and smarter than the Gossip Girl series (but truly no shade to the Gossip Girl series, those books are absolutely iconic). Set in 2007, this book follows Emery, a freshman at an incredibly elite boarding school - Derrymore - for the wealthiest of the wealthy. She is adopted but does not identify strongly with her Korean heritage, and she does not view herself as different from her white wealthy classmates. Her understanding of her place at school is challenged when she meets Lilah, a Taiwanese student who, in Emery's eyes, is stereotypically Asian and tries to glom onto her in the name of Asian sisterhood.

This book was really interesting. I appreciated how all the characters acted like actual teenagers - they were petty, cliquey, and selfish, and their emotions were all over the place. Sanibel perfectly captured the strange combination of disdain, contempt, protection, kinship, and competitiveness Emery felt for Lilah, and their friendship so mirrored teenage girl friendships where you simultaneously are obsessed with each other but also want to have the upper hand. This book probably also resonated for me because it was set in 2007, when I was in middle school, so the way high school operated then made sense to me and felt familiar.

The way Sanibel tackled microaggressions and passive racism also felt so spot-on. Emery cozying up to whiteness and proclaiming she wasn't like other Asian girls felt so true to how someone in her position, especially at a grossly wealthy school like Derrymore, would try to protect herself from her peers' judgment and racism and also really try to believe she wasn't any different than her classmates. The juxtaposition between her and Lilah was endlessly fascinating. Lilah never tried not to be perceived as Asian, but Derrymore would never have let her anyway; having parents that were not as wealthy as her peers' gave her less proximity to whiteness, and she fit in in the ways that would have shielded her.

This book also does such a good job of showing how rich people truly can get away with everything, and the spoken and unspoken mores that keep other people feeling othered. Sanibel really captured how rich communities police outsiders and interlocutors, and the ending was pitch-perfect in its depiction of the moral compromises you have to make if you want access to all the benefits.

This book is also just wickedly fun and well-paced. I liked it a lot!

Thank you to NetGalley and 8th Note Press for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!