Comparing a group of women to primates, their family planning to those of birds, their interactions with men to groups of mice—these make for compelling insights…Engrossing.” – The AV Club 
 
 “Picture ‘Real Housewives,’ add in pop-science, and you have Wednesday Martin’s new book.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 
 
 “A very funny, and slightly scary, look at the denizens of Manhattan’s Upper East Side.” – Connecticut Post 
 
 "Any population is fair game for anthropological research, so why not the super-rich, super-thin, and oh-so-well-dressed mothers of New York's Upper East Side?... The author uses these two examples of cultish “subtribes” to demonstrate how the Primates of Park Avenue subject themselves to “grueling group endurance rites” in order to maintain their appearance. It was just one of the many strange-seeming cultural practices that some women told me about.” 
 
 Although the book includes no such disclaimer and is advertised as a “memoir,” Martin told The Post she “telescoped certain parts of the narrative in order to protect the privacy of friends, neighbors, associates and family.” 
 
 That “telescoping” seems to have moved events that happened in different neighborhoods and put them on the Upper East Side. – People 
 
 “An amusing, perceptive and, at times thrillingly evil takedown of upper-class culture by an outsider with a front-row seat…Martin’s writing is confident and evocative…Her reading of the fashion attire of real estate brokers for ‘triple mint’ apartments is brilliant…at a time when a social comedy of the rich a la Tom Wolfe has been lost in national discourse…it’s fun to dip into a sophisticated, if silly, look at the Upper East Side’s Twilight Zone. Then she ends the book by saying (and I am paraphrasing) “well, the boys ended up getting accepted to schools on the Upper West Side so we moved there” which left me wondering “then why the heck did you go through all those contortions (not to mention the outlay of so many millions of dollars and all the emotional trauma of getting “charged” (see page 80) by these ‘primates’)”? This chapter threw me into so many emotions, many not because of the author but because of the topic.
– In its description of a highly publicized exposé on Upper East Side housewives, publishing giant Simon & Schuster notes that author Wednesday Martin compares "mothers’ snobbiness at school drop-off ... to olive baboons." Now, less than a week after the publication of Primates of Park Avenue, the New York Post claims Martin's facts are the real monkey business—and the New York Times reports her publisher plans to add a "clarifying note" to future copies of the memoir. The Post outlines a number of assertions in the book that it says don't hold up. Among them: Martin writes that she lived on Park Avenue with her two children for six years; the Post contends that she lived there with one child for three-and-a-half years, selling the apartment in 2007. The book also describes Martin working out at Physique 57, but the fancy gym didn’t exist during the quoted time period. The same problem exists with references to desserts shop Ladurée and Uber, both of which came to the city in 2011. Martin tells the Post that "since the book is organized by topic (ex. real estate, social hierarchies, exercise), it is not always a straightforward chronology." Her publisher backs that up: "It is a common narrative technique in memoirs for some names, identifying characteristics, and chronologies to be adjusted or disguised," Simon & Schuster's VP tells the Times; she says future editions and e-books will get a "clarifying note." The Times reports that it ran an op-ed from Martin on her experience last month, and quotes this line from it: "I stuck to the facts."