Author:  Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Title:  Nanny Returns

Publisher:  Atria

In this delightful sequel to The Nanny Diaries, we're reminded once again that money doesn't buy happiness—especially if you're an upper class kid in New York City. Nanny Returns is funny, sad, and appalling, but most of all it's a really good read. This is not a book to skim—you don't want to miss lines like, "He turns to me, so hopeful, as if I'd just told him I'd heard his stepchildren weren't cleaning the toilet with his toothbrush."

Authors Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus are deliciously sardonic as they skewer the high-drama, ‘image is everything' class that is Manhattan's upper echelon. In that world, style far outranks substance. Children are no more than a fashion accessory, something to make their parents look good on special occasions and completely ignored the rest of the time.

Returning to this hotbed of parental one-upmanship—after years living abroad—is the heroine of The Nanny Diaries. No longer a grad student-turned-nanny to pay the bills, Nan is now a married woman (to "the Hottie" of the Diaries), not to mention the proud owner of her own consulting business, a house, and a large dog.

Unfortunately her business boasts exactly one client, the house is a crumbling ruin (with potential), and her husband's job involves saving the world via one State Department business trip after another.

So when a tony prep school calls inviting her to be their Director of Staff Development, Nan jumps at the chance. It will help pay the bills and keep her mind off her husband's desire to start a family.

One would think a former nanny would be perfect mommy material, but Nan is not so sure. She's gun shy, having seen too many traumatized children in her former line of work. And speaking of traumatized children, guess who shows up at Nan's door as a drunken sixteen-year-old? Grayer X, her former charge from The Nanny Diaries.

Since we last saw him, Grayer's dad has moved out (and in with a movie star), his mom has gone non-functional, and Grayer's holding a grudge against Nan because—all those years ago—she abandoned him. (Never mind that she was fired and had no choice.) But more to the point, Grayer now has a younger brother, Stilton, and persuades Nan to help him save the little guy from the ruthless self-centeredness of their parents. Since Nan harbors residual guilt from her time with the Xs, it's a fairly easy sell. But one thing leads to another and before she knows it, Nan is knotted up in the X's tangled family ties. Fortunately, it turns out to be a good thing—for Nan, Grayer, and the readers—that Nanny Returns.

**This review first published on January 11, 2010.