'Enchanted Ivy'

Sarah Beth Durst’s young adult novel “Enchanted Ivy” is a mix of fantasy, action, teenage uncertainty, Princeton life and “Twilight” — and surprisingly, it’s still worth the read. It only took me one Sunday afternoon to plow through its pages, but the book, I imagine, might be less easy to digest for a reader without a clear mental picture of the Princeton campus and its more intimate details.

Much of the plot revolves around specific gargoyles on campus who come to life and lead the protagonist Lily on her quest to find the mysterious Ivy Key. If she can find it, she’ll pass the secret Legacy test (we all knew there was one) offered to descendants of the fictive Vineyard Club and gain automatic entry into Princeton. Unfortunately it’s not that simple, as it turns out Durst, who went to Princeton herself (Class of 1996), winds up introducing creatures much more dangerous than irate professors.

In the beginning of the book, it’s a bit like Durst takes the reader on an imaginative tour of Princeton, so that the reader is able to visualize the FitzRandolph Gate, East Pyne and Prospect Avenue, where, much of the action takes place. Things get interesting when Potential Love Interest 1 shows up in the form of an orange-and-black haired boy named Tye, who’s amusingly sassy and acts as Lily’s guard.

That is, until the Vineyard Club alumni, a.k.a. the Knights of Princeton, assign her a new guard: Potential Love Interest 2, named Jake. (Note that it wasn’t the troops of green monkeys assaulting East Pyne I found hardest to believe in this book, but the fact that “Greek god” Jake is apparently oblivious to the way that all the girls on campus look at him.) Things start to get interesting on Lily’s quest when she discovers that the chained dragon statue on the Chapel kills people, that the FitzRandolph Gate is the gate to a magical world and another Princeton, and that (spoiler!) she isn’t fully human.

While Durst certainly takes a flight into the fantastical, her story is very well-grounded in a real knowledge of Princeton. For instance, she is spot-on in the fact that an entire magical showdown could take place at Forbes and the rest of the campus wouldn’t notice. Likewise, there’s something familiar about the notion of a taproom packed with bottles full of magic. But mostly, she’s accurate in her notion that people will do anything to get accepted here, because Princeton, after all, is a pretty magical place.