"Not since Mommie Dearest has there been a transcription of a complex mother-daughter relationship as powerful. I rooted with all my heart for this girl. Ashley Prentice Norton's writing is so gripping, vivid, and moving -- so realistically drawn -- it leaves even the most well-adjusted reader with the chilling knowledge of what it's like to be raised by wolves. The Chocolate Money is devastating and unforgettable." 

-- Isabel Gillies, author of Happens Every Day and A Year and Six Seconds

As addictive, decadent and delicious as chocolate itself!

Set in 1980s Chicago and on the East Coast, this electric debut chronicles the relationship between an impossibly rich chocolate heiress, Babs Ballentyne, and her sensitive and bookish young daughter, Bettina. Babs plays by no one's rules: naked Christmas cards, lavish theme parties with lewd installations at her Lake Shore Drive penthouse, nocturnal visits from her married lover, who "admires her centerfold" while his wife sleeps at their nearby home. 

Bettina wants nothing more than to win her mother's affection and approval, both of which prove elusive. When she escapes to an elite New Hampshire prep school, Bettina finds that her unorthodox upbringing makes it difficult to fit in with her peers, one of whom happens to be the son of Babs's lover. As she struggles to forge an identity apart from her mother, Bettina walks a fine line between self-preservation and self-destruction. 

As funny as it is scandalous, The Chocolate Money is Mommie Dearest, Prep, and 50 Shades of Gray all rolled into one compulsively readable book.

Ashley Prentice Norton is a graduate of Exeter, Georgetown, and the Creative Writing Program at New York University. The Chocolate Money is her first novel. She lives in New York with her husband and three children.