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Who doesn’t want a glimpse into the lives of the 1% as told by someone who has had an insider’s view into that lifestyle? With this premise, I was intrigued by the cleverly titled, Wanted: Toddler’s Personal Assistant. The author, Stephanie Kiser, moves to New York City after her college graduation and finds she can’t afford the lifestyle she wants due to crippling student loan debt. The only position she can find to help her financially survive is nannying for the wealthy families that pervade the city. Against the backdrop of this experience, the author plays out her own disadvantaged upbringing in a working-class town outside of Providence. As with any memoir, its success comes down to the reliability and likability of the narrator, and while I found the stories about her employers and their exploits interesting and educational, I never really warmed up to the person telling the story.

What I took from Stephanie’s story is that her nannying experience wasn’t all good or all bad� just as with any cross-section of life there are the good, kind, and giving people, and the self-important, arrogant, nasty folks. I do think there was at least one chapter missing from this story as I think the book could have benefited from some self-awareness and self-reflection from the author. Her position in the story is that the game of life is rigged for the wealthy and the powerful—I don’t mention this as a means of debate whether for or against, but Stephanie never seems to consider how the choices she has made in her life up to this point (as told in the book) have affected the outcomes she has had to confront. As a high school student, she had the opportunity to play college basketball on scholarship at schools that may not have been the Ivy League but would have still provided her with a good education and less student loan debt. She decided she was finished with basketball at that point and chose instead to go to a junior college before attending Emerson College and majoring in writing for film and television. Emerson is one of the most expensive schools in the country and she majored in a subject area where it is notoriously difficult to find employment. To further compound her plight, she moves to New York City, one of the most expensive cities in the world, to chase her dream. I would have liked to see some hindsight perspective from her, realizing that you don’t have to major in writing to be a writer, that you can live anywhere and find creative people to help encourage and inspire artists of all kinds. I grew weary of the victim narrative she often invoked when so many of her problems were self-inflicted. I think her high school should have done a better job advising her about the long-term effects of her choices, but I doubt in her head-strong immaturity she would follow any advice that would try to talk her out of her determined path to immediate gratification. As someone who majored in writing for film and television, perhaps she can now identify with this iconic line from the film, Good Will Hunting: 'You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.' It is an expensive lesson, and by the end it’s evident that she still hasn't learned it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.