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Nanny Returns: A Novel
Nanny Returns: A Novel
Nanny Returns: A Novel
Audiobook12 hours

Nanny Returns: A Novel

Written by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Narrated by Susan Bennett

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

3/5

()

About this audiobook

More than four million readers fell in love with Nan, the smart, spirited, and sympathetic heroine of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Nanny Diaries.


After living abroad for twelve years, Nan and her husband, Ryan, aka H.H., have returned to New York to get her new business off the ground and fix up their fixer-upper. To compound the mounting construction woes and marital chaos of Ryan announcing his sudden desire to start a family, sixteen-year-old Grayer X makes a drunken, late-night visit wanting to know why Nan abandoned him all those years ago. Soon she is drawn back into Mrs. X's ever-bizarre Upper East Side conclave of power and privilege in this "eminently readable" and "surprisingly affecting" (Entertainment Weekly) tale of what happens when a community that chooses money over love finds itself with neither.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 15, 2009
ISBN9781442304048
Author

Emma McLaughlin

Emma Mclaughlin and Nicola Kraus work together in New York City and are the authors of the new novel Between You and Me. They are also the authors of The Nanny Diaries, which was made into a major motion picture, the New York Times bestsellers Citizen Girl, Dedication, and Nanny Returns, and their first YA novel, The Real Real.

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Reviews for Nanny Returns

Rating: 3.043955991208792 out of 5 stars
3/5

182 ratings20 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Many unappealing people in this novel. Nan made me persist, I guess in the same way she feels she has to.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Narrated by Susan Bennett. Arrrghh! Nan is such an enabler and doormat. I really enjoyed "The Nanny Diaries" last decade, but perhaps my being 10 years older now, I found Nan's lack of backbone annoying. I would have called social services on the kids, high-society protocol be damned. Actually, that would have made a more interesting book: how would high society react if social services was called on one of their own? All things considered, narrator Bennett did excellent voicework, whether as snooty high society or the frustrated-at-every-turn Nan.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was one of those books you just can't put down until you get to the end.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Typos & irritation -just enough to get me to stop halfway through (which I never do). The whole meek and mild main character irritates me to no end. If she gets her voice in the end, I'll never know but nothing irritates me more than a one-dimensional main character with overly made up characters around them.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In the sequel to The Nanny Diaries, Nan has returned to New York City with her husband, Ryan, after a twelve year absence. While working on setting up her consulting business, grappling with immensity of a home renovation, and Ryan's sudden desire to start a family, Nan is taken by surprise when her last charge from her nannying days, Grayer X, shows up on her doorstep. Despite her attempts to avoid the world she left, she is drawn back in to the upper crust of New York society to aid the child she never really let go of.Nan's return to the highest circle of New York society is another fascinating insight into a social group that utterly evades common sense. What makes the narrative even more compelling is the placement of the novel at the beginning of the economic crash of 2008 which had such a significant effect on the upper echelons. McLaughlin and Kraus also explore the issue of what makes a good parent and really recognize that growing up and moving beyond events in our pasts is never as simple as it sounds. The return of Grayer to Nan's life is also realistic and provides resolution to the relationship that was broken at the end of the previous novel. While the humour of this follow-up novel isn't as pronounced as the previous one, and the society people of New York seem even more heinous, the book is an intriguing return to characters who are still just as sympathetic and real.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    It took me awhile to get halfway through this book. It didn't help that I'm reading like 5 books at the same time, but I finally decided to just give up and abandon the book. The first book, The Nanny Diaries, was SO good... I guess I shouldn't have expected much from this one, but it really disappointed me. It was hard to get even halfway through it, mostly because you really don't care about any of the characters. You don't care that Nan doesn't want to have babies with her husband who's always away. You don't care about Grayer who is grown up and needs tons of therapy because his family is so messed up. You don't care about the X'es because their lives are even more messed up than they were in the first book. You REALLY don't care about the rich kids at the school that Nan consults for because they're all just rich kids who do horrible things to the poor teachers that work there. (It probably doesn't help that I'm a teacher in real life and would be mortified at the way they allow the students to treat the teachers in this school because of the $$$ that their parents are pouring into it.) The only character you somewhat care about is Stilton and you can't help but want to adopt the boy so he doesn't have grow up in such a dysfunctional family. Time for a new book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Having never read the first book in this series, The Nanny Diaries, I was able to start The Nanny Returns with a little bit of perspective. As does, Nan, our former Nanny protagonist, who has recently gotten her man (she is a newlywed), her masters, and returned to New York to renovate a dilapidated house. Though she’s struggling to launch her consulting business, she can’t help but become all tangled up with her former charge, Grayer and his younger brother, Stilton, and the horrific Mr. and Mrs. X. Read on to watch Nan juggle it all as the story lines begin to intertwine. This book is fun, easy read that details Manhattanites behaving badly. The characters are too unbelievable for the story to carry any heft which is too bad because Nan (finally) makes some excellent arguments for and against motherhood in the final pages. Motivations are rarely explained, and if they are, it’s self absorption. And almost everyone is terrible or tragic beyond Nan and her little circle. Nearly every scene starts with a scream or a crash leaving the reader with a juvenile fiction taint. And a lot of the storylines aren’t satisfactorily resolved. Nan part 3, anyone?If you’re not expecting much, this book delivers.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    not as great as the first but still a great story
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The audio for this is very appealing -- Susan Bennett's voice makes Nan just right. I just plain liked the first Nanny book and this was the sequel---and in a while I want to see what happens---with the house renovation and a possible addition to Nan's family. Although it paints a terrible picture of wealthy parenthood, the "story" is about what happens to Nan amid one particular family mess that she has spent feeling guilty over for years, along with her own disruptive life happenings. Although there are several plates revolving in the air at the same time, they do all pull together in the same story---just hang in there to see what happens.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read The Nanny Diaries several years ago and found the book to be fun, witty and entertaining. Nanny Returns just didn't do it for me. I still laughed at Nanny's sarcastic inner monologue, but felt that the plot was lacking.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nan and Ryan are back in NYC after living abroad for 12 years. Nan is starting her consulting business while Ryan is off working with diplomats. Nan is left to deal with a non-existent contractor and a house that is falling apart more and more each day. Ryan is pressuring her to start a family, but Nan is just not sure she is ready to.Then one day Grayer X, Nan's old charge who is now 16 years old, shows up at her door late one night. Nan feeling guilty about leaving Grayer how she did - helps his younger brother Stilton with a boarding school interview - posing as his mother. Suddenly Nan is thrown back into the world of Mr & Mrs X - who are in the middle of a very public divorce.Nan gets an offer to be a faulty development person at Grayer's private school. She walks into a group of snobby kids ganging up on a good teacher while trying to impress the school board members. Nan navigates the politics at the school while trying to play mother and father to Grayer & Stilton. Nan reconnects with some high school friends as well and finds herself in the middle of Upper East side mother and their nannies. Memories of her previous times with Mrs. X and Grayer keep flashing before her eyes. In between the charity balls and weekends in the Hamptons, Nan realizes that she might be ready to be a mom but to Grayer & Stilton - not her own kids.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Brutal depiction of parenting skills of rich and hollow New Yorkers. While I enjoyed the Nanny Diaries, this sequel struck me as far too self-congratulatory.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This book takes place more than a decade after the end of The Nanny Diaries. Nan has just moved back to New York after living abroad with her husband (Harvard Hottie, aka Ryan), and as she is trying to renovate her falling-apart home and get an HR consulting business off the ground, she finds herself being drawn back into the privileged life of the X family, as Grayer (the boy who she was a nanny for during The Nanny Diaries), now sixteen, is once again suffering at the hands of his negligent parents and reluctantly relies on Nan for help. On top of that, her husband is ready to have kids, but Nan isn't sure if she's is, or will ever be, ready, and reentering the world of the X's doesn't help matters.I read The Nanny Diaries back when it first came out and remember liking it but not loving it back then, but I did enjoy the movie version, so when I saw that there was a sequel something nostalgic in me decided that I had to see what happens next. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by Nanny Returns and did not particularly enjoy the read.You can read my full review at Rantings of a Bookworm Couch Potato.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Minor spoilers, so stop here if you care. Other reviewers have done a great job summarizing the book, so I'll leave it at this:The good: The authors' witty style and willingness to "tell it like it is" about NY/Metro lifestyles through the eyes of Nan Hutchinson, the nanny-heroine we met in "The Nanny Diaries." You want this book to be so much more than it ends up being because it's written so gosh darned well.The Bad: Cliched, cliched, cliched. Especially the ending, which you can see from about page 24. Instead of using her experiences to move Nan in a new direction, the plot leads her firmly to housewife and mommyville, once she realizes her reluctance to have a baby isn't because of her absentee husband, their falling-apart house, or a lack of money to properly raise a child, but instead because she's harbored the fear, for ten long years, that she #$%&@# Grayer X up in her nanny days and that she'll do the same to any other child in her care.The ugly: Considering her circumstances, will the third novel show us that Nan has finally turned into Mrs. X?Again, exceptional writing. Nan is at her best when dealing with the bizarre circumstances she finds herself in due to the irresponsibility of the X parents. Unfortunately the focus of the book is just too muddled: is it Nan's ambivalence about motherhood? A repeat of Nanny Diaries with younger brother Stilton as the focus? More social commentary about New York's Beautiful People? Don't expect too much and you'll find things to enjoy here, but it you haven't read the first book, that's the one to go to.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I loved the Nanny Diaries and was really excited when I spotted this sequel in my local library. I was extremely disappointed with this book. I just could not get into it. I got to about the 3rd chapter and I could not bring myself to go further.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    "Nanny Returns" is set twelve years after the original "Nanny Diaries". Nan Hutchinson--our nanny from the first book--has spent the time traveling the world with her UN peacekeeper husband, and is looking forward to coming back to New York, buying a house, gearing up her career and settling down. Nan hasn't been back in the City long before her plans start to unravel. First she runs into an old nemesis, then her old charge Gayer shows up on her doorstep looking for help. Nan's life quickly unravels as she tries to help Gayer, but in the end could her experience with him help her figure out what she wants in life? "Nanny Returns" was an enjoyable light read, but I was disapointed with the pedestrian nature of the storyline. There is nothing in "Nanny Returns" that hasn't been covered in lots of other chick lit novels, which makes this a disapointing offering from the team that brought us one of the genre's first true hits. Nan also seems to be super whiny in this novel, which makes it hard to identify with her and the ridiculous decisions she makes. If you enjoyed the "Nanny Diaries" it might be worth it for you to read this second volume, because it does bring back some of those great characters from the original. However, don't expect something on the same level, because I found this "Return" less fresh than the original.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Every once in a while I like to move outside of "comfort zone" of reading and pick up a book I've heard a lot about but wouldn't ordinarily read. That happened a few years ago when I heard a lot of buzz about "The Nanny Diaries" and, on impulse, picked up the audio version at my local library. At the time, I found the novel fairly interesting with some fascinating observations and some humorous and touching moments. It wasn't going to make my list of all time favorite books, but I didn't mind the couple of hours I spent listening to it.So, when I heard the authors were planning to revisit the world of "The Nanny Diaries" with events having moved on ten years, I have to admit part of me was a bit curious to see where things would be ten years later. So, I put the sequel on reserve at the library and prepared myself for the funny glances I'd get when it came to check it out. It's ten years later and Nan is back, married to HH from the first novel. She and hubby have been traveling around the world for the past several years, but have just bought a major fixer-upper in New York where they hope to settle and possibly start a family of their own. Early on, Nan and HH have very different timeframes in which they'd like this to happen. Nan and HH go back to the old building where they met for a walk through on HH's parent's old apartment. Nan finds memories of her time when the X's flooding back and she takes great pains to avoid any path crossing with them.That is until Grayer shows up on her doorstep a few days later, drunk as a skunk and angry with Nan for abandoning him. Grayer also has some issues with the Xs divorce. All of these things should have made for an interesting follow-up to the original. Unfortunately, what worked about the original never really materializes here and the "Nanny Returns" ends up feeling more like an obligatory sequel than a necessary one. It's almost as if the authors had a check-list of items they wanted to revisit and the novel slowly works their way through them.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Nanny Returns, the sequel to The Nanny Diaries, is a rather disappointing novel. Twelve years after the disastrous end to Nanny’s employment with the Xs, Nanny is back in New York after a number of years living overseas with her husband, Ryan (previously known as the Harvard Hottie). Now she’s an educational consultant, called in to help the Jarndyce Academy with their staffing issues. One day, Nanny’s former charge, Grayer, ends up on her doorstep, and Nanny finds herself one again thrust into the world of the Manhattan elite and their children.Well, I felt a little bit let down by this novel. Well, really, a lot. The Nanny Diaries had charm and wit; this book simply fell flat for me. One-dimensional, stereotypical characters abound; the prose is over overwritten, and the people-don’t-talk-like-this-in-real-life dialogue really got to me after a while. In The Nanny Diaries, I found myself emotionally invested in Nanny and HH’s budding relationship; but since he’s not really present in the book (he’s away dealing with a grain shortage or something), I found that I didn’t care about him all that much. Nanny’s character was also frustrating at times; she kept seeing that things were wrong (eg, a teenager nearly OD’ing on Xanax and alcohol, and nobody seemed to think anything was unusual in that), but she never seemed to do anything about it. In fact, for most of the book, she was simply an observer, not a vital part of the action. In the end, as with HH, I simply couldn’t find it within myself to care much about what happened to her.I frequently found myself having to re-read parts of the book, because often the authors never really made it clear exactly what was going on. The authors make a stab at humor, in Nanny’s little “asides” every now and then, but I didn’t find this book funny ay all. Grayer gets a bit of character development in this book, but his younger brother, Stilton, is basically a mini-version of Grayer in the Nanny Diaries, without the same kind of emotional pull. I enjoyed The Nanny Diaries, and I’m sad to say that this doesn’t live up to it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a quick read and enjoyable but belies its serious message. It is sad to know that some children live in familIes like the ones described in the book. The writing quality is pretty iffy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Nanny Returns is the sequel to the very popular novel, The Nanny Diaries. The original book was published in 2002, and I read it that year. I vaguely remember seeing the film on dvd, but I don't remember many of the details of the first book. Thankfully, my lack of reading memory was not a burden. There were just enough reminders in Nanny Returns to revive my memory. Nan is now married to Ryan (the Harvard Hottie!), and after living many places around the world, they have returned to New York City and purchased a house in Harlem that is in disrepair. Nan has her master's degree and works as a consultant, even though she only has one client. Grayer, whom Nan used to nanny, is now 16, the Xes are divorcing, and now there is an adorable 7-year-old Stilton X as well. Here's what is really important: the book is laugh-out-loud funny. I loved it more for the social commentary, which I daresay will age well as a tale of the privileged, private schooled rich New Yorkers in the late 2000s. It's a book that works both on the societal and personal level. It's an absolutely hilarious indictment of New York City's clueless and deluded upper-echelon; the brilliance lies in the fact that it manages to malign without defaming. I don't think the financial elite would take offense at their portrayal in this book. On the individual level, Nan is delightful. She's smarter and more worldly than her 21-year-old self, but she still struggles with wanting to do the right thing and her place in the world, and in New York society. Ryan, her husband, is ready for children, and she's terrified of messing them up. There's a touch of Katie Fforde-like everywoman in Nan. She's stubborn, independent, warm hearted and plagued with problems that seem insurmountable at times, yet Nan handles them with grace, humor and an appropriate amount of ire.I read The Nanny Diaries before my days of book blogging, and I remember enjoying it, but I don't recall my other reactions to it. Despite my spotty memory, I enjoyed Nanny Returns more. Should you read it if you haven't read the first one? Sure. You might miss a few of the inside jokes, but the crux of the story, and it's social commentary would not be lost. It's refreshing to read a book that makes you laugh out loud throughout the main character's ups and downs. It's never too serious or too fluffy, and it beautifully traverses the fine line between personal story and social commentary. I'm continuously amazed two authors can write together well, but Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus are improving as writers. Nanny Returns is their best book so far.