A review by megansmith
Come & Get It by Kiley Reid

challenging dark funny reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I really enjoyed this book so much, like to the point I don't want to look up reviews. Maaaybe it's my (painful) RA experience that had me feeling all kinds of stressed as this book progressed, but I found it hard to put down and even if I was busy and couldn't read that day, I was thinking about the book and wondering what would happen.

Kiley Reid is a fantastic author and this book really shines. I liked Such a Fun Age but i LOVED this book and you can tell Reid took her work as a researcher seriously (more than Agatha did!) and wrote living truth into great prose. She summed up a feeling I've been chasing in books lately in one line in her "making of Come & Get It" section - 

The fiction I want to read places the best and worst parts of a person on the same page and lets the reader make up their own mind.

For all the complicated choices her characters made, many of which I disagreed with, I still felt myself pondering their stories and wanting the best for them, wondering where they'd go from here.  She did a great job finding multiple perspectives and intertwining three relatively separate stories into one coherent story. 

I will say, I thought about knocking off .25 of a star, since after Halloween I lost track of time in this book and couldn't tell if it was the end of semester, or the end of the year, but I think that might have just been me flying through this book and not reading slowly enough to catch cues where Reid left them. 

Overall, I recommend this for anyone who enjoys; books about the college experience that do not have pretentious & overly-complicated prose, anyone hustling in tough circumstances, anyone who liked Such a Fun Age...or almost anyone. I do think this is such a great book and it's my favorite so far of '24!