Come and Get It by Kiley Reid.

Onto the 2024 book releases! Kiley Reid's second novel was one I was very much looking forward to reading. Her debut, Such A Fun Age was a great read and enjoyed international success and was long listed for the Booker in 2020.

Come and Get it is set in 2017 at the University of Arkansas and is a character driven novel about a number of women. Millie, a resident assistant in her final year, three of the students who live on the floor of the student accommodation she is responsible for and Agnes a visiting professor. These characters are well written and meticulously developed as their lives intertwine and it was easy to get invested in their lives but about a third of the way through I realised that's all that was happening.
There is little to no plot. Reid glances off themes of ambition, money, race and class and they’re there throughout the novel but in a frustratingly I wanted to know more kind of way. While the interactions between the characters was entertaining and engaging and quite funny at times, it just wasn't enough to carry the entire book.

I didn't dislike anything in particular but a novel requires a plot to bring it all together and there isn't one here. The elements of the book about money were the most interesting and I would have loved it if Reid had examined this in more detail. I did like the ending and overall, I liked the characters and the writing but it felt a bit like you have all the perfect ingredients for a delicious meal , you follow the recipe but then it doesn’t taste as good as expected.

Three stars. I

Millie has plans and works heard to fulfill them- graduate, get a job, buy a house. As a supervisor in a residents dorm in Arkansas, she is put in touch with visiting writing professor Agatha, who wants to interview students about their views on weddings. This focus soon changes when Agatha becomes fascinated by the richer pickings of their attitude to money across class, economic and racial divides. As her relationship with Millie develops, though, plans are about to be derailed. Reid writes like a dream and I was absorbed by this portrayal of campus life. She writes with humour and warmth, the characters are believable and nuanced and although she casts a clear eye over racial and class politics she is subtle, never hectoring or didactic. The events at the end of the book escalate with an inevitability that had me breathless. A very enjoyable ( and thoughtful) read.

It took me a while to settle into this book - there are so many characters and the narrator keeps swopping, so I didn't know if I was hearing the viewpoint of a 19 year old student, a 24 year old hall monitor or a much older lecturer. Having got to grips with the characters I waited patiently for the plot. And then I waited a little longer.

The author seems to have got so swept up in her cast that she forgot that there needs to be some thread or plot that weaves them all together. Just before the end she remembered this and threw in a bit of drama, but it was all too little too late. By this point I felt that the older characters were being irresponsible and naive if they thought their actions would remain undiscovered, let alone without consequences. The younger characters were just that, a cast of university students, blundering around, making the mistakes and social faux pas that everyone does at the age.

You know those salt and shake crisps you can get, where the salt comes in a little blue sachet you have to shake all over the crisps to add flavour? Reading this book felt like eating 12 packets of those crisps without shaking the salt all over them. Perfectly okay and relatively filling, for a snack, but… something very clearly missing. Unsatisfying.

The writing here is brilliant, but the characterisation is lacking. The southern dialect peppered into some of the characters’ vernacular felt like a lazy way of telling us about them. I would have liked fewer characters, more back story and more happenings. Everything felt a bit too bland and dry, like a crisp with no flavour.

I was invested in this book all the way through and loved how character driven it was. The fact it was character driven and the characters felt so developed made me interested in the characters in a way that had me wanting to see how things played out. I also loved the setting of the book and the university atmosphere.
Sometimes it felt like the characterisation was taking over a little too much rather than other aspects of the story, however overall it worked well towards the characters being realistic in the minds of the reader.
The book made you consider morals as well as right and wrong and whether you agreed or disagreed with character decisions.
There is no doubt this will be a read that stays with people after reading it and will spark many a discussion with readers. Thank you so much for an advanced copy!

My favourite thing about this book was definitely the level of detail and interest that went into each characters backstory- and there were quite a few characters to go into! It explored some of the power plays/frictions and relationships occurring amongst a group of women on a college campus. I really enjoyed these women being of different ages/coming from different stages of life but I felt like there wasn’t a lot of plot happening. I liked the book, but I’d go into it knowing that it’s more an exploration of the characters than a plot driven book.