I was hopeful about this book, while there were some parts of it that were interesting and made me think, overall it was too dramatic and not real for me. When there is too much going on, i no longer can take it seriously and think the points can me made without all the overdramatization It was a quick read and i think others will like it more than i did.

Kiley Reid is a master of time. This book has a number of storylines that are told in a nonlinear fashion but Reid ties it all together beautifully.

COME AND GET IT |

Thank you @putnambooks and @netgalley for the eARC. This comes out Jan 2024!

I personally went into this blind and am glad I did - you can trust that you're in good hands with Reid.

We explore similar themes as in SUCH A FUN AGE, power, race, microaggressions and some new themes, ostracization, exploitation, and bullying, and we follow along with several main POVs which I think always makes for a more interesting compulsive story.

This is a campus novel, centering a dorm building primarily for scholarship kids, transfer students and juniors/seniors. We follow a young Black RA (one of the few Black kids that we hear of), and a few of the kids on her floor as well as an older teacher / journalist who's conducting research but ends up getting derailed by other interests as sparked by a small group of white girls that she interviews.

What I appreciate the most is that while there are very serious issues that the book deals with, it's not written in such a way that it's called out so obviously. We are experiencing along with each of the characters and the dialogue is that good, that there's a natural flow to everything. People are complicated and dimensional. We hate/like some people, and depending on what you know about someone your sympathies grow enormously.

I can't wait to talk to someone about this because there is a lot to discuss!! This is going to be a great buddy read/book club book.

3 stars- I absolutely adored the author's first novel so I had high hopes for this. This one fell flat for me, pacing felt a bit off. While characters can be unlikeable, I couldn't connect with any of them. Thanks netgalley & the publisher for the ARC, in exchange for an honest review

Tense story but the dry, detached prose completely turns it off. Not for me but I'm sure the gen fiction crowd will eat it up

This book is SO GOOD. I was already a fan of Reid’s after Such a Fun Age, but this is even better. Millie is a complicated, layered character but ultimately so compelling that you never consider not rooting for her, and Reid has such an ear for dialogue. This book made me laugh, cringe, and mourn when it was over.

QUICK TAKE: Kiley Reid definitely knows how to open a book. She follows up the fantastic SUCH A FUN AGE with another sharply-written coming-of-age story about a group of women living in and around a college campus and the micro- and macro-aggressions that inform their relationships and conflicts. Very character-driven, which I love.

To say I loved this book is an understatement. I related to it so much despite the fact that I am a GenXer. I’ve come to realize that I love books like this. Just a flash of people’s lives and how they live in the moment. Kiley Reid is so, so good at this! The characters are so diverse, that you can’t believe one person is giving them their voices. So many of the characters are unlikeable, but I still liked them, she made them so human, that you can’t help but want to know more. I definitely want to know how some of their lives turned out. It shows how much people can make mistakes but actually redeem themselves in the end. I wish all people were like that. Isn’t wit for more from Reid! She is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.

I know this will be a popular book based on Kiley Reid in general (and I get it!). I somehow feel like I missed a few things in this one and I’ll be curious if others feel the same way I really loved the beginning, felt like the middle of the book was super jumbled and loved the end and somehow I couldn’t put it down. I was excited for a storyline that is unique and this one definitely delivers. I’m eager for my friends to read all about Agatha, Millie, Tah-ler, and Kennedy (the names in this book just hit the nail on the head) and the stories that weave them together.