Begin Again starts with the cute and bubbly charm that I've come to expect from Emma Lord, but really levels up in heart and character development as the book goes on. About half way through, I sat down to read a chapter before bed and stayed there until I finished the book. Relatable themes of belonging, grief, and identity had me laughing, crying, and squealing with glee. This is exactly the warm-hearted book I was in the mood for, and I didn't even know it.

This takes place in college but felt a bit more like high school. Not everyone needs to party but it was very wholesome, not even staying up late. The MC swears using foods inside of swear words and turns out that is a pet peeve of mine.

That being said, the main character is relatable and funny. I enjoy books that focus on found family. Its refreshing to see characters bond and choose to support one another. The events here are predictable but in a comforting way that keeps you reading. Sure, you know things are going to work out and Andie and Milo will end up kissing, but that’s part of the appeal. The main part of the book isn’t romance, but rather Andie’s growth and healing from her mom’s passing.

Things went a little too smoothly but it’s fiction and escapism so I can’t be too bothered.

This was a rare gem…a bit predictable, but so adorable I had to read it in one day. The characters were relatable and lovable, the storyline was the right mix of heavy and light, and has you rooting for everyone. Will definitely be checking out more from this author.

Emma Lord is quickly becoming an instant-buy author. Her writing is a breath of fresh air: sweet and comforting. In Begin Again, Emma Lord so wonderfully captures the magic of going to college: the desire to fit in, the struggle of juggling a social life with studying, the first time away from home, all wrapped up in a pink, millennial bow.

Lord has a way of creating fantastically flawed characters that are so relatable you instantly feel as though they are your best friends. The main character, Andie, comes to school in an attempt to recreate the life her mother once had, but while doing so finds her own path…and a love interest. Andie and Milo’s relationship is a slow burn, “why don’t they already?!”, kind of love. This book was one of Lord’s better stories - more of a Tweet Cute vibe. It’s a must read if you love magically curated desserts and Taylor Swift references.

I haven't yet met an Emma Lord I didn't adore. Begin Again is a slow-burn romance that builds on friendship while Andie finds herself--and a family--as she navigates tough relationships and college life. Super cute and easy read.

I don't know how Emma does it. I loved Begin Again SO MUCH.

Andie Rose is a planner and a fixer. She transfers to her dream school.- Blue Ridge State - to major in psychology, surprise her boyfriend by joining him on campus, and follow in her mother's footsteps by joining one of the school's secret societies. From the first day on campus, her plan hits a snag, but she won't let that curb her unrelenting enthusiasm.

Major players in the plot are her roommate Shay, who Andie is determined to help in choosing a major, and their RA Milo, who is dependent on caffeine. There is a very humorous sub-plot involving the coffee shop where Milo and Shay work and Andie's determination to cure his caffeine-addiction.

I absolutely loved how Emma resolved the love triangle. I was not expecting it at all and it fit seamlessly into the plot. I won't spoil anything but I thought it was perfect. There were so many unexpected moments in the overall plot and I love how much care went into constructing the story.

I loved the college setting for this book. Andie is a college freshman who transferred in the spring semester, and I appreciated that her transition onto campus wasn't seamless. There were so many authentic college scenes in this book - dorm game nights, struggling to balance the course work and extracurriculars, not sleeping enough, and struggling to find your identity while away from home for the first time. This was a sweet coming-of-age novel and I highly recommend it to YA Romance fans.

I am such an Emma Lord stan but that didn't impact my appreciation of this book. It was genuinely fantastic and heartfelt. I can't wait to read it again, which is the highest compliment I can give to a book.

Thank you to Wednesday Books for an eARC in exchange for my thoughts.

I have loved all of Emma Lord’s novels. Her writing has an unrelenting energy and charisma that just flies off every page. She makes you feel like her main characters are speaking to you and like you are their close friend.

Begin Again feels darker than Lord’s other books. It prominently features grief over the death of a parent and the profound effect that can have on someone. All of her books feature difficult or strained familial relationships, but Begin Again addresses that with even more depth. Andie deals with her father leaving her to be raised by her grandmothers and Milo struggles with the aftermath of his girlfriend cheating on him with his brother.

In Begin Again, the reader is let into Andie’s deepest and most intimate thoughts. On the outside, Andie is an endlessly energetic person, who is determined to fix the problems of everyone around her. However, she shares her feelings about her difficult relationship with her dad and her desire to live up to her mom’s legacy with the reader. Even in these moments where we see her at her most raw, Andie radiates warmth and optimism. It feels impossible not to like her. I mean, how could you not love someone who uses her favorite foods to replace swear words?

From the beginning, it is clear that Milo and Andie have a special connection. They share an understanding of what it means to lose a parent too young, and Andie had previously struggled with feeling distanced from others by that grief. It is so clear how deeply they care about each other: Andie notes that she is always aware of where he is in a room; Milo is willing to brave thunder snow to save her. Andie also notes how comfortable Milo’s mom makes her, which is certainly important for someone who lost her mom young. I absolutely fell in love with both Milo and Andie and their relationship reading this book.

I love how important Platonic relationships are in Lord’s work as well. Andie builds a loving and supportive friend group at Blue Ridge that makes her feel safe and welcome in the new school. It would have been so easy for the story to be about Andie having a hard time finding her social footing as a transfer student, but she almost immediate finds a fiercely loyal friend in her roommate, Shay.

Begin Again has endless heart and charm, and I would have expected nothing less from Lord. This book will make you laugh and will break you heart (but then put it back together again).

I have a conspiracy theory with this book: Emma Lord wrote it specifically to make me fall in love with Milo.

Why else would Milo be the perfect man??? Every tiny detail I learned about him made for the best character I’ve ever read.

But don’t let me spend this entire review talking about him. This book isn’t about Milo.

… Well, it’s not entirely about Milo.

Throughout this book, Andie (our main character) struggles with her perfectionism, juggling her school life and her personal life, and solving her friends’ problems so she doesn’t have to focus on her own. The book is very character-focused as she works through these problems and feels more like we’re watching the day-to-day lives of these characters instead of reading through a specific conflict.

I really enjoyed how slowburn this book was, both in the aforementioned character-focused plot and in the romance. While there is one moment near the beginning I can point to as where our love interest began to show some feelings for the main character, I can’t point when exactly he began to have these feelings. The characters just silently had feelings for each other throughout the book and mutually decided to ignore it until they could not ignore it anymore, and I absolutely loved it!

This book also surprised me twice with the reveals of a couple secrets: one early on, and one closer to the ending. It’s easy to say I wasn’t expecting where this book was going sometimes, but I loved the ride!

I can’t wait for this book to be released, partly because everyone gets to read it and partly because I’ve already preordered my own hardcover copy of this book! I can’t say for sure right now, but I have a feeling Begin Again is going to be my favorite book of the year!

Begin Again is a book that follow Andie as she enters her first year at Blue Ridge College. The college represents more than a dream but also a connection with her mom, Amy, that has passed away when Andie was 11. Amy was a force to be reckoned with and served as the first knight in a secret radio broadcast she created to bring up issues in the school as well as broadcast news to the students. In addition, Andie has some of her mom's past ribbons from the annual ribbon collecting events that allows freshmen students to join secret school societies. With this little information about her mom, it fuels Andie to do whatever she can to try to find out more about her mom at this school.

Amongst all of this she finds out that her plan to surprise her boyfriend at Blue Ridge College has backfired when she finds out that he transferred to Little Fells Community College for her. Trying to keep the relationship alive the two continue their challenge as a long distance relationship and come to question if this is what they really want.

During Andie's journey she comes to form a tight knit group of friends with her roommate, Shay, her statistics tutor, Valeria, and her sleep deprived RA, Milo. The 4 of them come together and create a bond that supports each other throughout all the obstacles they encounter throughout college. Amongst it all Andie finds out who the current knight is for the secret radio broadcast and finds herself caught up in it, allowing herself to find herself and build more confidence in her voice.

In addition to the great friendship story that Begin Again follows, it also shows the importance of family as we look into the relationship between Andie and her distanced dad. When her mom passes away her dad runs away to deal with his sadness on his own leaving Andie with her two grandmas. With a rocky relationship her dad comes back to try to rebuild a bond and we can see the two navigate their problems with each other.

I rate this book a 4/5 because the story was easy to follow and I enjoyed each of the characters and what they brought to the story. There is a plot twist at about 70% of the book that I was not expecting at all and was really invested in after. I love the closure that you get on the book in the ending and it felt like a solid read with no questions left unanswered for the reader.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC!

pre-read: one more chicklit in my tbr won’t hurt…

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read: 3.5/5
thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC! for a brief comparison review: not as horrifyingly corny as her last two books, more on par with Tweet Cute. yay! overall a light comfort chicklit with an acceptable amount of corny. it does its job!)

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in ARC fashion, here’s a few positives and negatives (not many, because most of mine were spoilers):


(+) definitely not as corny as her last two books. still corny, but not in the way that i wanted to give up reading for the next decade. maybe a 3/5 on the cornymeter, which is totally acceptable and approved for a chicklit.

(?) the whole broadcasting piece. not too sure how i feel about it. on one side it’s really not as radio rebel as it could’ve been (thankfully), but on the other side it’s still written and used as a plot device in a very disney channel way.

(-) andie. definitely the worst character, as all main characters tend to be (but if we’re ranking, she’s not the author’s worst main character). her quirky saying-silly-words-instead-of-cussing is enough to make me fight for my life, but i’m excusing it because i know i would have eaten it up in middle school. for a “fix everyone’s problems” character, though, her advice is superficial and sucks.

overall, an enjoyable-enough read. if i shut my eyes i can almost pretend that this is what college is really like!

I adore Emma Lord and this book was delightful. I’ve read her three previous YA novels and loved them all. Her charm and wit is unmatched and Begin Again just might be my favorite so far. Milo was by far my favorite love interest but this whole cast of characters was fantastic. I loved each of the reveals and how the story came together, plus the Taylor Swift reference is top notch. Highly recommend and can’t wait for Emma’s next book.

“A new start doesn’t mean you have to wipe the slate clean. Just pick up the pieces. Begin again.”

I’ve been on a YA romcom kick lately and this one definitely tops the list. It’s a book about friendship, family, and fresh starts. Andie transfers to her dream university in the middle of freshman year and tries to find her place in a new environment, on top of maintaining a long-distance relationship. As she juggles her academics, work and social life, she discovers things about herself with the help of newfound friends.

The characters in this book were all fantastic and highly relatable, and I loved how one of them is a bookstagrammer! It made me reminisce my college experience — my dorm life in particular. And because this is an Emma Lord novel, desserts were a huge part of the story. I craved and ate bagels for an entire week because of this book 😂 It was a fun and charming read, but at the same time dealt with grief and some deep-seated parental issues. I can’t wait to read more of Emma Lord’s future works!

5/5 stars! Young adult is not a genre I typically go for, but Emma Lord is an author I will always read, and Begin Again is just as wonderful as her other books! A lovely cast of characters, who are well fleshed out and I enjoyed all of their journeys. This is the kind of book that you read with a smile on your face!

What a touching story of growing, finding yourself, love, and beginning again. I enjoyed following Andie through her first semester at her dream school after transferring mid-year to follow in her parent's footsteps. I loved the friendships Andie made and following her through the adventures of collecting ribbons and growing into her place at school.

I really wish Bagelopolis was real! All I wanted throughout the book was a bagel... the chocolate pretzel bagel sounds like a DREAM.

Emma Lord is one of my favorite authors and I loved Begin Again so much!

Thank you NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the arc! <3

Absolutely loved this book. I loved the non-spicy touches of romance, the self-discovery, and the emphasis on healing family relationships. Andie and Milo were extremely lovable characters!

A fun YA book, from an author I really enjoy.

This was a cute story and quick read

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.

Andie is a second semester transfer student to Blue Ridge State - the college where her parents met and fell in love. She had always planned on going here and following her deceased mother’s footsteps. But when she arrives, everything goes awry. She discovers that her best laid plans probably were not the right ones and slowly learns about herself.

The concept of the story was good but the book fell a bit flat for me. There were way too many characters and subplots that it was hard to keep track of everything. I wasn’t attached to any characters and the story just dragged on sometimes repeating itself.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martins Press for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Emma Lord is back at it again with another banger. I was first introduced to Emma Lord when I got an ARC of Tweet Cute and ended up loving it. And as I’ve read more of her stuff as she continues to write, I continue to adore it all.
This one might be my favorite yet. I really like some of the themes the author tackles and I love the actual growth and realizations and changes that these characters make and go through, I’m very realistic ways and paces. Our MC isn’t perfect, but the way that’s written is perfect (IMO). We very realistically go through the challenges she faces with various relationships, including her relationship with herself and I love the setting and world and the friends. It’s a delightful and meaningful read and I wholeheartedly recommend it

What does it mean to start over?

Andie Rose has a plan: live out her college dreams in honor of the mother she lost, be together again with her high school sweetheart, and take over the world as a self-help guru. In that order.

Life has a way of throwing her in more ways than she planned, upending her carefully scheduled and organized path towards something wholly unexpected.

Those are the best kinds of journeys anyway.

Andie is an instantly likeable protagonist with a world that feels real and believable. Her friends and peers have their own B and C plots which are just as compelling and with a love interest that could have easily fallen into tired tropes that never once fails to feel fresh. My one issue, if it could even be called that, is Andie's use of baking euphemisms in place of swearing. It's a staple of Lord's work to have generous call backs to baking (and we all thank her for it) but pairing a "snickerdoodle" with actual swear words was jarring enough to take me out of it, though not enough to hurt my enjoyment. Similarly, the one use of descriptive language for skin tone or any other kind of physical attributes was given to Shay which implies that she's the only Black character. I'm glad that Lord, as she does in all her books, is actively working to show a more diverse cast of characters but would have liked to have seen it integrated in a less blatant way.

Nevertheless, the story, the world, and most importantly Andie's voice are so instantly compelling that it wasn't hard to want more. Lord has a voice that captures that angst of growing up without ever going into saccharine which makes her first foray into "new adult" all the more enjoyable. There's a lack of college voices within YA/NA and Andie's is one that is both interesting and unique. She feels like a real person with real flaws which is a rarity that should be celebrated. I actively look forward to seeing what world Lord creates for us next.

4 stars

This was such a fun YA college book. Andie is such a relatable main character. She always did her best to help others with their problems, even though if it affected her negatively. The book did start off a little slow, which is why I took a half a star, but I read the second half of it in a day. I liked how the side characters had there own goals and stories. I find in a lot of YA books that the side characters mainly revolve around the main characters and we don’t really see their lives, but I’m glad that’s Begin Again didn’t do that. Overall, this was a great read.

Thank you for NetGalley for giving me an e-ARC of this book!