Nanny Returns

I read the original Nanny book back when it was first published. Grayer's dysfunctional parents infuriated me then, and they only get worse as he grows up.

This book fastforwards to Nan being married and moving back to New York after living overseas for a number of years. Grayer's parents are as useless and uncaring as ever and one night when Grayer gets in trouble he reaches out to Nan to help him. Just as she did when he was a toddler, Nan comes to his (and his younger brother's) rescue. Over the course of the book the parents marriage falls apart and their dysfunctional relationship with each other and everyone else in their lives reaches new levels of crazy.

While the story between Grayer and Nan works, the parallel story of her new job as a consultant to an elite private high school is undeveloped and choppy at parts. She's brought in a time that the school is dealing with a scandal. It's as if the authors use this story line to bash all wealthy New York people. I'm not sure what happened to the authors to make them this bitter, but that's the way it seems to me.  While I realize that money and privilege can make people do ridiculous things as they get caught up in keeping up with each other, even these people seem over the top.  It reminds me a bit of Bonfire of the Vanities where I couldn't empathize with any of the characters as they were all horrible people.

The book was fast paced but the ending seemed a bit rushed, and I feel like Mr. X's story was never completely tied up. That part of the book just kind of ended.Overall it was still a fun book, but like most sequels, didn't live up to the original.  Supposedly the first book was based on the true experiences of the authors when they worked as nannys for wealthy New York families.  While I could see the reality based fiction in the first book, this book seems more fabricated. Which is fine since it's fiction, but in this case it's often choppy and not always plausible.