I appear to be one of the few people who didn’t read Kiley Reid’s debut novel ‘Such A Fun Age’ – which ended up being one of the books of 2020 and a Sunday Times bestseller. So when I heard she had a new book out – I requested an advance review copy from Net Galley. Here’s the blurb:

“Everything comes at a price. But not everything can be paid for.
Millie wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. She’s slowly saving up from her job on campus, but when a visiting professor offers her an unusual opportunity to make some extra money, she jumps at the chance.
Agatha is a writer, recovering from a break-up while researching attitudes towards weddings and money for her new book. She strikes gold when interviewing the girls in Millie’s dorm, but her plans take a turn when she realises that the best material is unfolding behind closed doors.
As the two women form an unlikely relationship, they soon become embroiled in a world of roommate theatrics, vengeful pranks and illicit intrigue – and are forced to question just how much of themselves they are willing to trade to get what they want.
Sharp, intimate and provocative, Come and Get It takes a lens to our money-obsessed society in a tension-filled story about desire, consumption and bad behaviour.”

Before I started reading this I noticed that it had really mixed reviews on Net Galley – with some people questioning the lack of storyline – but I decided to not be deterred and started reading!

The book tells the story from the view points of various people based around a University dorm – Agatha and Millie as mentioned in the blurb – but also Kennedy, who is one of the students in the dorm around which the story is based. Whilst there is a ‘real time’ timeline – it also looks at the back story of each of the characters, and thus what has made them who they are today.

I can totally see where the reviews are coming from with the story not really going anywhere. Observationally it is brilliant, and you really get a feel for campus life – and the characters are very well described – but I just didn’t get the point of the book. I kept reading to see if something exciting happened – and it just never really did. 

It feels like after the acclaim given to the author’s first book – this ‘difficult second album’ didn’t really hit the spot.

Many thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for my ARC. You can ‘Come and Get It’ right now, as it was published on Tuesday 30 January 2024.

reid's character-driven sophomore novel is set in 2017 at the university of arkansas. someone on goodreads described it as perfectly summed up by that tweet that said 'you’re not the worst person in the world, you’re just an undergraduate', and pretty much got it in one.

the book follows millie cousins, a twenty-four-year-old senior resident assistant who is determined to graduate, get a job, and buy her own little house. so when agatha paul, an alluring visiting professor interested in interviewing (and eventually eavesdropping on) girls in millie's residency for a book (and then a ethnographic microanalysis for teen vogue), offers her payment in exchange for frequent dorm visits, she eagerly accepts.

as we witness their relationship develop, we simultaneously get to know an unlikely group of girls living in the room beside millie's, and their economic, social, and race relations become the novel's catalyst for tension.

while conversations and moments shared by the girls are often unfeasible (particularly the novel's climax - a v far-fetched bloody dorm scene), i actually really enjoyed their pov slice-of-life narratives. my favourite, i think, was chapter ten.

this book took a while to grab me, and i almost dnf'd it at 30%, but i'm so glad i gave it a second chance. i really like reid's voice and writing style - i think her charisma shines on the page and she remains one of my favourite writers..

thank you so much for the arc!

Come and Get It is based around a dorm at the University of Arkansas. We are quickly introduced to the 3 central characters; Agatha, a visiting professor, Millie, a resident associate (RA) and Kennedy, a student.
Very little seems to happen in the first half of the book, we follow their lives and learn something of the back stories. It’s slightly frustrating but suddenly at around two thirds through the novel explodes into life. Without giving too much away 2 of the characters become dramatically involved and the events that led the other character to Arkansas throw a completely different light on the plot. From this point on I could not put it down and became totally engrossed. It’s a fantastic story of how a small mistake can ruin someone’s life and what might be necessary to gain redemption. If you pick this up, stick with it, it will reward you.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. I love a character-driven book and this fits the bill. The characters were so wonderfully dislikeable in a way that says it's ok to be imperfect. I was fully immersed and enjoyed the flawless, descriptive writing.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the opportunity to read this book. I really enjoyed Kiley Reid’s book Such A Fun Age so I was really looking forward to this book. Unfortunately it didn’t quite meet my expectations. This book is extremely character driven and I feel that I wasn’t quite in the right mood for this. I found myself struggling to connect with the characters and wasn’t able to really get into the book. It took me a long time to finish as I didn’t feel drawn to picking it up. That said I would be interested to try this as an audiobook as I feel the character driven prose may work better for me in this format.

I rarely DNF books but I didn't get past the first couple of chapters with this. I so loved Such a Fun Age and felt drawn into it instantly. The writing was perceptive and entertaining and true to life. This felt so different with no spark and nothing special to recommend it. It felt very flat to me - just a rather bland recounting of the main character carrying out some interviews for some research which didn't feel very important. Similarly, the initial chapter about Millie felt very much like exposition. It read to me as if Reid had got too close to her subject matter and was too invested in laying out her theories about money and class and campus life to build a compelling set of characters or a gripping plot.. I admit that it might get better if you read more but I just didn't want to find out what happened. Disappointing.

I really enjoyed Kiley Reid's previous book Such A Fun Age but sadly, this second book did not live up to the same standard. This is a good paced read that is very character focused throughout that will definitely have its audience, but this wasn't one for me.

Kiley Reid is such a gifted writer and once again she didn't disappoint. Thos is kileys second novel and if you like character centered novels with fantastic writing then pick this up.

I enjoyed this book, and found myself lost in the character-driven narrative. None of them were particularly likeable but they were very realistically portrayed. Though nothing much happened in terms of plot, I was still gripped by the prose. Kiley Reid's writing style is approachable, engaging and nuanced. I would recommend this book to a friend.

Reid’s latest novel is a disappointingly wishy-washy affair.

<b>Disclaimer:</b> The review below is negative and ranty. If you happen to have liked this novel or are looking forward to reading it I recommend you give my review a wide berth.

<blockquote><i>The feeling of being invested in their lives, it was thrilling and terrible.</i></blockquote>

Reading <i>Come and Get It</i> was akin to waiting for a train that is delayed, so you sit there waiting and waiting, cycling between frustration, hope, and scepticism as the delayed time continues to increase. After hours, or what it feels like hours given your now woolly perception of time, an announcement informs you that your train has been cancelled.
This is a roundabout way to say that while reading <i>Come and Get It</i> I kept waiting, anticipating really, for <i>something</i> to happen. Sure, some of my favorite books are plotless, that is, rather meandering in nature. Take Elife Batuman's <i>The Idiot</i>, which like <i>Come and Get It</i> hones in on campus/college life. That book is exceedingly digressive and resists traditional narrative arcs (of conflict and resolution). Yet, I found the novel's sardonic tone and realistically absurd dialogues to be deeply entertaining. But the narrative of <i>Come and Get It</i> seems to operate under the belief that it is providing a story with more dramatic elements, suspense even. As we switch between the novel’s three central figures, I was <i>waiting</i> for the atmosphere of subtle yet present unease (established by that very first chapter and later on compounded by the various character dynamics), to actualize into something more substantial, but it never did! There are a couple of plot points that the characters treat as being pivotal, or as a source of drama, but were actually deeply anticlimactic. The narrative ascribes far too much weight to these two pranks, which were actually just cringe and superfluous. The characters remain one-note, and as with her debut, Reid focuses way too much time on giving page space to deliberately obnoxious and oblivious characters, and doing very little with the person who should have been the novel’s central character (whose characterization can be essentially boiled down to bland yet ‘nice’). The novel seems to promise something dramatic, but nothing ever does. Compared to authors like Brandon Taylor, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Danzy Senna, Reid’s social satire feels tame, and shallow. The novel lacks bite, as it fails to really sink its teeth in its (supposed) themes: from the interplay between race, class, and sexuality, to present us with an uncomfortable close-up of privilege, or to consider how it feels to be a young adult in late-capitalist America. Yet it seems under the assumption that it is this witty and razor-sharp ‘tell-all’ of college life. The novel suffers from a confused identity, it doesn’t know whether it wants to be a satire about an insufferable group of people (think <i>the white lotus</i> or <i>bodies bodies bodies</i>), or a more realistic and earnest portrayal of campus life and (young) adulthood. The novel’s undecided nature made me lose interest in what I was reading and I found myself wishing that the story would either commit to being a parody (a la libba bray's <i>beauty queens</i>) or take a more hyper-realistic approach to college novel (from batuman's aloof duology, to martin chelsea's understated<i> tell me i'm an artist</i> or taylor’s anxiety-inducing <i>real life</i>).

Throughout the novel, which takes place for the most part in the University of Arkansas in 2017-18 (why specify the year when said year bears little weight on the story?), we follow three characters, Millie, Agatha, and Kennedy, who don’t seem like they should belong to the same book. Kennedy was an incredibly derivative take of the 'dumb-blond' characters like Glee's Brittany, Mean Girls's Karen, or Tiara from Bray's <i>Beauty Queens</I>. Her character would not be out of place in a novel by Moshfegh, Jen Beagin, or Mona Awad (but even then she would be ‘effective’ only as a cameo) or in a campy satirical comedy like <i>Bottoms</i>, <i>Heathers</i>, or <I>Theater Camp</i>…but here she feels out of place. Her ‘arc’, if we can call it that, is risible, as we are expected to care about her internal struggles when said struggles are worded in a way that makes them and her by extension appear idiotic. Her sections feature way too many flashbacks about her bond with her mum-cum-bff, same-y scenes about her wanting to make friends but not being able to, leaving crusty plates in the shared kitchen and feeling ‘attacked’ because her roommates aren’t keen on her industrial quantities of 'childish' stuff, and mentioning that she feels some type of way about Agatha’s book (her exact feelings towards this book are for the longest time never delved into and tbh the way she thinks this book ‘saved’ her felt like a reach given the way her character is depicted as being).
We have Agatha, a white lesbian visiting professor in her late 30s who comprises several ethical codes to listen in on the conversations between a trio of besties who spend their time in the college's residence hall. She finds their in-jokes and ways of expressing themselves compelling despite or maybe because they are incredibly vapid, materialistic, and unimaginatively problematic. She keeps going on and on about how interesting their attitude towards money is, yet beyond establishing how unaware of their own privilege these girls are, the narrative doesn’t reveal anything particularly insightful on this subject matter. And yet we are meant to believe that Agatha’s piece on them is a hit and that readers love it. I mean, in this day and age, when plenty of content where people ‘tell’ on themselves on social media…and the things these girls talk about are banal and unfunny. Ironically enough Agatha herself complains during a scene about "hat[ing] stories like this—Getting-There Stories. It was like someone talking about their dreams. They were only interesting to the person they'd happened to." Well, I can say the same about this trio's exchanges, as their banter and gossip did not interest me one bit. One of them, the trio's 'alpha', really wants a dog and thinks it's funny to pull puerile pranks with problematic undercurrents. They are a rather entitled and grating bunch, the caricature of what the collective imagination tends to think of American girls, but even if we accept them as caricatures, they just weren’t that fun. I’d rather watch a clip from an episode of <i>The Simple Life</i>, which is guaranteed to be appealing yet entertaining. Agatha's wonderment at the girls’ ‘modern’ lingo, is rather hard to digest given that she has not been living in a bubble (she interviewed people for her previous books and is a professor and therefore must have been in contact with other young people before coming across this trio). That chapter early on relationship with her ex had some sort of promise, as here Reid is able to give readers a convincing overview of their relationship. Their break-up felt realistic as Reid shows how their age and wage gap, as well as their different values and priorities, slowly begin to sour their domestic life. But then the rest of the chapters that focus on Agatha do not really provide any new insights into her psyche. Despite being aware of the murky morals of writing about a group of (much younger) people without their consent (not only does she exaggerate their flaws but she takes all sorts of liberties when recounting their histories and words), she keeps doing it because it’s just so damn fascinating (it's anything but) to hear these girls talk. Agatha's choices in the latter of the novel seemed unconvincing given that there was really nothing in her previous chapters that indicated that she would be the type of person to go ahead and do what she did. It also made me rather disappointed by the light in which her sexuality is cast…
We then have Millie, a 24-year-old Black student and RA who, similarly to Agatha, had a very promising chapter early on, as we learn about how she took time out of college to go back home so she could be close to her mum. I actually loved (yes loved) how the narrative describes their time together, and how their bond with each other is conveyed. It felt true-to-life and it promised a story with some emotional beats to it. But then Millie’s storyline ends up completely focusing on how she wants to buy a house (mais pourquoi ?!), and how compared to every other RA she doesn't/can't take this job lightly, and that she is a Nice Person. Nice she may be but give us something else to work with. I can relate to and believe in characters who are passive, especially in scenes of conflict or when dealing with microaggressions (like in <i>win me something</i> and <i>luster</i>), but Millie isn’t even particularly passive, she is just happens to be "there". Her chapters reveal little about who she is, and I found myself wanting for her chapters to reveal something more than her surface-level kindness. We are led to believe that she develops a crush on 2 characters (characters she has 0 chemistry with) combined with the ‘pranks’ (which again, were both pathetic and bathetic) and her quest for a house, see her adopting a more careless towards attitude towards her role as the residence hall's RA. The ‘consequences’ of this felt dramatic, in an unearned way. There was also something moralistic about her storyline which really didn’t sit well with me. Her being swept up by a romantic tryst and being mildly miffed by the people involved in the prank aimed at her, makes her what, stray from the Good Path…like really? She doesn’t even call out the person responsible for the prank, and yet the fact that she now gives the people involved in this prank a bit of a cold shoulder makes her irresponsible? Bad? Puhlease.
Side characters are thinly rendered stereotypes. Reid's older characters were far more convincing than her younger ones, whose words and behaviors ultimately come across as rather affected and cringey. Take Millie's side kicks for instance: the mean lesbian and the sassy gay.

As I kept waiting for a dramatic event or exchange to happen, I found myself growing increasingly annoyed by the novel. From the way the characters are portrayed to the flat dialogue. The prose also left something to be desired as it brought to mind authors whose writing I am on the fence about: Sally Rooney, Emily R. Austin, and Naoise Dolan. It sometimes really struck me as generic, impersonal, and unimaginative. We never delve deep into any one issue or theme, and the college setting felt really underutilized, a gimmick, as we don’t learn much about what any of the characters are studying or how they actually feel about their present and future.

<B>final thoughts:</b>
<i>Come and Get It</i> feels like a missed opportunity. It promises <i>something</i> but never delivers. The three main storylines do not mesh well together, the prose is flat, the characters are underdeveloped, and outside of those first introductory chapters, the narrative is monotonous. There were moments of humor that landed, such as: "Ryland, I'm kind of emotional," Millie said. "I have lots of emotional experiences in parking lots. I always have."
But these were outweighed by several scenes that are meant to be witty but didn't strike me as particularly clever or new. Reid's satire lacks <i>oomph </i>and her social commentary was neither provocative nor insightful. Even on a purely entertainment level, <i>Come and Get</i> It just did nothing for me. The novel never seems to find its footing, from the pacing to its tone.
I swear that wanted to like <i>Come and Get It</i>, and maybe I would have if Reid had structured her novel as a series of interlinked stories, like Taylor does in <i>Filthy Animals</i>. But at the end of the day <i>Come and Get It</i> was something in the realms of Rooney by way of Curtis Sittenfeld, so if you are a fan of either, you might find Reid's latest to be a much more rewarding reading experience than I did.

In true Kiley Reid style, Come and Get It offers a stunning social commentary on class, race and the messiness of human relationships (and being a woman in college). The reader gets to spend time with each character, slowly revealing their pasts and what impacts their actions and beliefs.

The first 50% of the book was definitely my favourite - learning about what made each of them tick and putting together the puzzle pieces to see how they all fit. The book wasn't plotless by any means but it certainly was heavier on the characterisation and rightly so. Our main narrator, Agatha, is ethically questionable providing a lot of interesting insight into academics and the ethics of interviewing, writing and taking advantage of students. There was love and infatuation, but it was not a love story and I didn't actually feel much kinship towards Agatha. Our other main character, Millie, also had a host of complexities and figuring out to do.

The plot shifts quite substantially in the second half of the book in reference to one character (Kimberly) in particular that leads to a host of connected events and most of the characters downfalls. It strayed more from social commentary to unknown grounds but it certainly got the point of the intersectionality of race, class, gender and sexuality across.

After her debut I was very much looking foreward to her next book. Can't say it totally lives up to it, but I did really enjoy this one. It's easy to read and kent me intrigued.

DNF, unfortunately. Though I really enjoyed 'Such A Fun Age', I think the character-driven nature of this novel just wasn't the right fit for me. Recently, I've been more drawn towards plot heavy novels that give me something to follow along with and 'Come and Get It' - while not at all bad - just wasn't what I wanted to read right now.

Come and Get It centres around a group of women at the University of Arkansas. Millie is an RA (resident assistant) in a student dorm, earning extra money to support her studies. Millie is slightly older than her peers as she took time out during a family crisis. This has led to her searching for stability and she dreams of buying a house and she is saving hard. Millie is positive, pragmatic and conscientious.

Among her charges is a young woman called Tyler, who is quite a dominant character, both to her room-mates and to her friends beyond the dorm. A seemingly minor exchange between Tyler and Millie at the beginning of term regarding the allocation of a shared room sets in chain a series of events.

Into this mix comes Agatha, an academic and author. She has previously encountered Tyler and her friends as part of a research project and is fascinated by their language and opinions around money and culture. She asks Millie to help her further her research in exchange for payment. Agatha’s proximity to the students and her complicated personal life soon lead her to increasingly unethical behaviour.

I was quite surprised to see that some reviewers saw Come and Get It as a slog. I found it absorbing from the start. While there are a large number of characters and we do get their backstories, I was intrigued to see how this diverse cast would come together (there’s some light foreshadowing that reassures you they will). The backstories themselves contain elements of drama and the pacing of revelation is done well.

The spine of the story is a series of (mostly) minor transgressions and omissions which escalate into a dramatic event. At its heart is the question of who gets punished and who gets away with it. This isn’t always obvious – while class, race and gender play their part, there are also less quantifiable forces in play, such as popularity, temperament and sheer luck.

Come and Get It is also a perceptive study of friendship and the way it shapes our perceptions of others and ourselves. Tyler is particularly fascinating. She’s not a bully, she’s not even overtly unkind, and she can show surprising charm and insight on occasion. She isn’t a beauty or obviously privileged, she is just such a strong personality that she exerts a powerful gravitational pull on those around her.

Mirroring the reign of Tyler is Millie’s new friendship group of fellow RAs. Suddenly Millie feels able to relax her persona of conscientious good cheer and join in their irreverence, but this leads her to make lapses as she finds her loyalties in conflict.

I raced through Come and Get It, intrigued to see how it would all come to a head. The resolution left me feeling satisfied and unsettled in equal measure.
*
I received a copy of Come and Get It from the publisher via NetGalley.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital ARC in exchange for a review.

Kiley Reid writes so effortlessly, taking on serious subjects with a deceptively light touch. While I didn’t connect with this as immediately as Such a Fun Age, this was a nice quick read exploring the lives and experiences of a group of intertwined characters in an American college town and beyond. This will be a popular read with some of the older students in the school.

SO GOOD! I didn’t think the author could live up to Such A Fun Age but they’ve absolutely done it with this one. Reid’s characters are so well done, they get right under your skin in so many ways. Literally in one chapter I was empathising with Millie so much that I was sat on the train home from work speed reading and nearly hyperventilating. Just the way the stories play out, like why Kennedy left Iowa, is perfect. Read this book!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for an honest review.

A follow up to the author's Booker longlisted "Such A Fun Age" - and one I consider to be a strong contender for the Women's Prize.

Whereas the first novel was a nuanced examination of race in America - this has as its explicit subject money (particularly among those of American college age) including a main character being a professor studying it.

Another difference is in the narrative arc - "Such A Fun Age" started out with a dramatic confrontation and largely explored its consequences; this novel builds up the tension towards a confrontation.

Both books have in common a heavy American bias in their setting and language - in both I had to look up frequent terms (starting with "RA" the job title of one of the book's other main protagonists).

Recommended for fans of the author.

This American author’s debut novel “Such A Fun Age” was a strong seller and really impressed me making my end of year Top 10 in 2020. It’s second novel time and the author has chosen to locate it on campus at Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2017 where main character 24 year old Millie is supplementing her education by working as a Resident Assistant in a dormitory building keeping an eye on the welfare of a group of young women. Into this comes visiting professor Agatha Paul who interviews some of these for a book she is researching. The novel focuses on the slights, the squabbles, the tensions and passive aggressions between these as they embark upon their lives away from home. If this all sounds trivial, on one level it is, but on another it feels so important and not just for the characters involved.
What Kiley Reid does so well is in setting things up so that we know there will be some fall from grace but it’s hard for us as readers to know how and even to who this will happen. There’s great relish in the telling of the story, which makes it an appealing read even for those like me, a great distance from what would be perceived to be the target audience.
It was striking to note how alien much of this is. This is one of those American books which seem to really mark the distance between them and us here in the UK, there were a significant number of references I just didn’t get. But, thankfully, I’m not the only one, the researcher Agatha Paul, is only a generation older than the students and she regularly has to have their language, beliefs and misconceptions explained to her. I now know what lampshading is and a narp and that what you should do with pupusas with curtido is to eat it. It is quite fascinating, on an almost anthropological level, to see what is important to these youngsters. Race, sexuality, class all exert their pressures and there’s such a myriad of reasons why someone might not fit in that it does at time feel heart-breaking.
So, would this be a better read for someone closer to the majority of the characters’ age or for oldies like me looking on? Not sure, I think we might take different things from it, but hopefully it will provide a good reading experience.
Compared to “Such A Fun Age” which dealt with big issues in a highly accessible way this could be seen to be making a great deal out of much smaller issues and I suspect responses to this could be mixed. (I couldn’t help but notice on Good Reads with ratings form 850+ early readers, who would be considered to be a likely fanbase there’s 15% opting for a five star rating with 68% evenly spread between four and three stars). I enjoyed it, I found it a pleasure each time I picked it up to read it and wanted to know what would happen, but admittedly, there were few holding-my-breath moments which I experienced regularly with the more gripping debut. I’m happy to see this as an author settling in for the long haul giving us a strong but not outstanding follow-up in what will hopefully be a long sequence of work. I’m certainly interested in finding out what Kiley Reid will bring us next.
Come And Get It is published in the UK on 30th January 2024 by Bloomsbury. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

I sadly didn't enjoy this one at all, having loved Such a Fun Age and been excited to see what Reid did next. It was so chaotic and messy, we started in one point then ran through back stories then back to that time then other people's back stories. I don't have a high tolerance for Millennial Disaster Women or maundering about thoughts and being told thought after thought after thought with no real character development. Yes, there was a feeling of a disaster building and then there was one, but then Peyton, who I thought was really well-drawn, acted totally out of character afterwards. Reid wanted to say a lot about money and there were some interesting points there but I just couldn't bring myself to care - oh, and everyone gets off scot-free, Agatha will sail on, Millie will manage.

Come and Get It is the sophomore novel from Kiley Reid, following on from the huge success of Such a Fun Age; a book I loved. I feel like Come and Get It may already be suffering a little bit from being in the shadow of that first book’s hype but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

It’s 2017 (another author dodging the pandemic years) in the University of Arkansas and Millie Cousins is a senior resident assistant focused on graduating and buying a house. Unlike her white counterparts she isn’t getting handouts from her parents so is saving every cent she makes. It’s an easy yes then when new professor and writer Agatha Paul approaches her with an offer. She wants to listen in on the students in the dorm and use all their inane conversations in a series of articles she’s writing about money and the privilege of those who have it and those who don’t.

Lots of bad decisions and their consequences later and everyone’s lives have been altered forevermore.

This is an ambitious novel in its scope and format. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, the writing is searing and a little bit addictive. I kept thinking about this book when I wasn’t reading it; and don’t get me wrong, nothing really happens until about 70% in, but I enjoyed the process of getting there.

Reid is clearly focused on class, race, and money in this book. Those themes get a bit muddled sometimes, but as a book of character studies, it excels.

There are quite a few different people mentioned throughout, but we get the most backstory on Agatha, Millie, and one of the students, Kennedy. I would happily have read more about all three of them and found the chapters that concentrated mainly on each of them to be the most gratifying to read.

I’m not even sure who I would recommend this book to, I know plenty will find it too slow paced, but personally, I felt intrigued and engrossed by it. Looking forward to whatever Kiley Reid writes next!

With many thanks to @netgalley and @bloomsburypublishing for the opportunity to read an early copy of #ComeAndGetIt, available to buy on the 30th of January. All opinions are my own, as always.