The Book of Ivy

The Book of Ivy (2014) is the first novel in the eponymous young adult series by first-time author Amy Engel. Adopting many of the standard tropes of dystopian novels aimed at teen readers, Engel creates a small, insular society that pressures its young people to conform in ways that are so stifling that one of them eventually decides to rebel against the system. In doing so, the protagonist discovers that the facile explanations for why her world is the way it is are in fact covering up an intricate web of conspiracies created by adults to maintain their power over others. The novel uses first-person, present-tense narration to elevate the tension and drama of the plot.

The novel is set in the town of Westfall, a small fenced-in community that ekes out a meager living in the midst of a nuclear wasteland that is all that’s left of the United States after a devastating nuclear war that ended with most of the population of the country dead. Westfall was established two generations earlier by survivors of the war, who banded together to try to carve out some kind of life for themselves and their families.

Named for the family whose patriarch founded the town, Westfall, now with 10,000 residents, it is no longer ruled by the Westfall clan’s democratic values. Instead, in a power struggle, the Lattimers have risen to power, and President Lattimer rules Westfall with an iron-clad, autocratic fist. In the name of safety, criminals and anyone deemed a traitor to the town are cast into exile outside the protective city fence – into a wilderness where unknown dangers lurk. In order to preserve peace between the recently warring families, a new tradition has arisen: the daughters of the losing, Westfall-affiliated side are paired with Lattimer-aligned sons in arranged marriages – and vice versa.



The protagonist of the novel is Ivy Westfall, the granddaughter of the town’s founder. Now that she is sixteen years old, it is her turn to be married in the annual ritual alongside other girls her age – her future husband is Bishop Lattimer, the President’s son and heir. Although she is nervous and wary of marrying a relative stranger, she is also focused on the mission she has been training for during the last several years: to forward her family’s attempts to reclaim power in Westfall, she is supposed to assassinate Bishop soon after the wedding takes place.

Ivy has been trained not only in hand-to-hand combat, but also to hate the Lattimer family. Her father, Justin, has had to raise his two daughters alone ever since the day President Lattimer had their mother killed. As her older sister, Callie, has told her, his son Bishop is no doubt cut from the same cold and heartless cloth.

However, after having lived in the same house with Bishop, Ivy starts to question some of what she has grown up believing all her life. For one thing, Bishop doesn’t seem to be anything like what Callie described. Instead, he is quiet and calm, deeply respectful of Ivy’s feelings, and displays a gentle nature. The more they get to know each other – without any physical contact as Bishop would never touch his new bride without her say-so – the more Ivy starts to develop feelings for him.



These feelings lead her to realize that she is stuck in the middle of a seemingly unsolvable dilemma. On the one hand, it is up to her to restore the Westfall legacy – killing Bishop is only the first part of her family’s complex and well worked-out plan. On the other hand, Bishop seems to be the only person in her life who is interested in actually getting to know her rather than just using her as a tool. As she realizes that no matter what happens, she can’t bear to hurt him, she thinks to herself, “If I kill Bishop, my family will be in power, but Bishop will be dead and what will I be? A murderer.”

Finally, Callie gives Ivy an ultimatum: she must poison Bishop at the earliest available opportunity. However, her burgeoning feelings prevent her from doing anything other than giving in to Bishop’s slow and hesitant attempts to befriend her. Instead of poisoning him, Ivy digs into family history, uncovering a series of startling secrets. It turns out that Justin and Callie have spent their lives lying to Ivy about how her mother died. President Lattimer didn’t kill her – instead, she killed herself because she was in love with President Lattimer but was forcibly married off to Justin Westfall instead. Not only that, the real reason Callie wants Ivy to kill Bishop is that Callie is deeply jealous that Ivy is going to be the wife of the next president. Callie had been planning to marry Bishop herself, but because he is the President’s son, he was allowed to exercise a little bit of choice in whom he married. Bishop confesses that he has been in love with Ivy ever since seeing her when they were both children – when it came time for him to marry, he chose Ivy over her older sister.

In the end, Ivy feels torn apart by the pressure from her family and her newfound knowledge. Not knowing how to protect them and at the same time prevent them from following through on their plot, Ivy pretends to be a traitor. She frames herself for the crimes of her family, tells Bishop the truth, and then accepts her fate to be exiled outside the fence. Forced to survive in the wilderness, she learns to rely on some of the same skills in which she had been training for her future-assassin days. The novel ends with Ivy realizing that there is another fence beyond the one surrounding Westfall, and heading for it.