“A fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students.”—blurb

I was initially drawn to this book (and truthfully, probably wouldn’t have been otherwise) because it is set at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville anddddd I went to law school at UofA and have lived here in Fayetteville for the past 10+ years!!! This aspect definitely ended up being my favorite part of the book! The author mentioned many locations around town and it was super fun to read her descriptions of Fayetteville!

As for the rest, I’m having a hard time summarizing my thoughts. For a large portion of the book, I thought I would probably DNF if not for the setting, because it felt like nothing was happening, but at the same time I ended up enjoying all of my time reading this novel. It is extremely character driven with little plot in sight. Very well written. I won’t go around recommending this one but I would absolutely encourage someone to read it if it has piqued their interest!

3.5 stars! ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️💫

Thank you @netgalley and publisher for an eARC!

I was so excited to read Come and Get It as I'm a huge fan of Just a Fun Age. But I just could not get into this read. I think it was a combination of the subject matter and questionable dialogue. Thank you for the opportunity to read it.

This started off super strong for me, but ultimately became really repetitive and left me feeling kind of icky in a hyperspecific way.

Kiley Reid has *such* a distinct voice. Her ability to reflect back such spot on, modern, relevant language and characters and scenarios is sublime. I think if you loved the characterization and language of Such a Fun Age, you'd probably enjoy at least parts of this book.

However, I think like in Such a Fun Age, there are a lot of weird plot choices here that just aren't really examined in a way that allows you to understand why they were even included in the first place. The way these characters talk can become a lot sometimes and I found it all insanely repetitive by the end of the story. I kept waiting to see where the book would take these conversations and the answer was not really anywhere.

I felt like the only character we're shown any semblance of depth with is just put there for shock value almost or as a plot point and not treated with a lot of actual sympathy. There's also just an unnecessary relationship towards the end of the book that felt weird and out of place, unexamined? Both of those things left me feeling really off by the end of this. It's almost like Kiley Reid couldn't commit to any of her POVs fully.

All that being said, I do think Reid is an astounding writer. She's engaging, honest, on the nose, current. I'm excited to keep reading from her, but this one missed the mark for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Putnam for an e-ARC!

Such an excellent book!! I love this genre so much and Kiley Reid knows how to bring the human experience to the forefront of your mind in everything that she does!! Love love love!!

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy!!

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Group for this e-book arc. I was initially intrigued by the description of this book and the cover caught my eye.

Millie is an RA at the University of Arkansas. She's twenty-four, saving up to buy a house, and managing a class load all while RAing the Belgrade dormitory. She meets a cast of girls who are all in a suite together, Agatha who is a professor and writing an article about marriage, and other RAs on the floor. Each chapter drifts between these characters' POVs.

I struggled at some points to get through this book. I loved the writing style, enjoyed most of the characters, but not much happened until the last third of the book. And then it seemed like a lot happened out of nowhere.

I wound up giving this 3 stars. It was interesting, I liked the characters and the character growth, but felt like it was slow in the beginning and crammed a lot in the ending.

Thanks @Netgally for the opportunity to read Come and Get it. I am a big fan of Kiley Reid’s writing and this book is no exception. I have seen lots of mixed reviews for Cone and Get it and I can honestly say that they are all mostly accurate. The book doesn’t appear to have a solid plot but the writing is great, the story is engrossing, and the situations are going to be relatable to a lot of people. For these reasons, I recommend this book. I kept turning the pages and wanting to know what was going to happen next.

Millie is an RA for a dorm that primarily houses scholarship and transfer students. When visiting Professor Agatha Paul comes to do interviews with the students, Millie becomes entangled with her work. Millie is focused on graduating and earning enough money to buy a house which becomes derailed when she gets involved with Agatha. Overall, this book is centered on socio-economic status and race as it follows the different perspectives of the students, the RA, and the professor. It was uncomfortable reading at times since Agatha was clearly being unethical in her method of collecting information and using it to write articles without the participants permission. There was also a power imbalance in the developing relationship between Millie and Agatha. Millie worked really hard at her RA job, more than some of her fellow RAs, but it was overshadowed by her involvement with Agatha. The storyline between the three suitemates was interesting because it shows how each person can view the same events very differently.

Come & Get It is a book about power, money, privilege, ethics, and how race intersects with those. It's smart, but also dramatic and compulsively readable

his multi-pov novel is set in 2017 at the University of Arkansas following a lesbian professor/ journalist ostensibly researching her next book, and the RA and three students who become entangled in a very messy web of relationships. I feel like it's a good idea to go into this without knowing too much, but I absolutely loved it. What does it mean to be ethical in academia? How do power, sexuality, and race intersect in complicated ways? Will the mistakes we make define us forever? Should they? And how do power and privilege allow people to get away with unethical behavior, leaving casualties in their wake? This novel is exploring those questions, but through the stories of well-developed characters who are extremely human and the kind of mundane details that create a strong sense of reality and of place. If you loved Such a Fun Age, Come and Get It will not disappoint as a sophomore follow-up to a blockbuster novel.

Come and Get It managed to do everything that made Such a Fun Age great without being an echo of the same thoughts or sentiments. I love that Kiley Reid makes characters who feel wholly familiar. As a reader with the benefit of emotional distance from the situation and a few years on college students, seeing the absolute wreck of a situation coming got painful. Despite wanting to beg the characters to see reason, their decisions felt so real I can’t imagine they would have even listened. My only true complaint is how the southern accent was written in the book. It felt jarring and didn’t work for me. The audio helped me get right past that with some great narration when I switched partway through though.

Reid is exquisitely observant and I love the people watching in her character driven novel. As someone who came of age in the Southern evangelical church, the whole book was worth the page describing how church people talk about people they don’t like. I was dying over it and I’m sure it goes down as my longest highlight in a book. Overall I’d gladly recommend this!

Come & Get It is a story about a group of students, some RA’s and a professor at the University of Arkansas and how they all become entwined in a complicated relationship/friendship and how their pasts both create their present and will affect their futures due to incidents which occur at the University over a short period of time. The plot is imaginatively, yet, possible and probable when you stop to think about the narrative.

It begins with a visiting professor, Agatha Paul who is there to write a book about weddings. She gets permission to ask some of the female student’s questions. The questions turn into more than she expected from these southern girls. She then gets permission from the Senior RA, Millie Cousins, who is 24 and older than most students at the college to use her room which is located next to the suite in which the girls are located to listen to them. She agrees.

But Millie has her own problems with this suite of girls. They come to her with caddy questions about each other and then they decide to pull a prank on her and another RA. They decide to reciprocate back, perhaps not the best idea. And that starts a war of the roses type situation.

Meanwhile, Professor Paul is getting incredible stories from these girls and bringing them to a magazine and starts to get paid for them. The girls start to really not get along and we have some mental health issues complicating the girls’ relationships. All seems to be going well until the whole thing backfires on everyone! Millie had no idea what else Agatha had been writing about. And she is stunned.

With bits and pieces which come out about the past lives and issues of all these women, it’s no wonder things went wrong so fast!

Come & Get It is an interesting look at college life as seen through the eyes of a group of women who want so much but have everything to lose. Will the outcome change them for the better? We will see.

Thank you #NetGalley #G.P.PutnamSons #KileyReid #Come&GetIt for the advanced copy.

I just couldn’t get into this one. I wasn’t connecting to any of the characters or the story. I stepped away multiple times and tried to give it a fair shot but it ended up a dnf for me. I did enjoy the writing style and may try it again in a few months when I’m in a different headspace.

3.5 stars

I loved Reid’s debut novel, Such a Fun Age. With it, she showcased her sharp ability to create characters who are fully human—good, bad, and everything in between—and a narrative that’s as messy as life itself.

Set in an Arkansas University dorm, this novel is chockful of characters, but two take center stage: Millie, a 24-year-old Black woman who works as an RA and Agatha, a 38-year-old white woman, who’s a visiting professor and journalist researching a story about young women and weddings.

We also get to know a host of students and RAs, all living/working in a dorm for underprivileged students. Themes of money/power, both related to socio-economic status and race are explored through the everyday conversations and situations of these women. Agatha becomes so immersed in this dynamic, she gets Millie to agree to let her eavesdrop on the conversations in one of the suites for $40/week. Agatha then takes her research and turns it into profiles for Teen Vogue.

Reid’s ear for realistic dialogue is extraordinary...I listened to part of the audio for this, and narrator Nicole Lewis did an excellent job. I rightly cringed at the way Agatha was able to use her power over Millie, and how some of the students treated each other. While the characters were distinct and compelling, I still feel like this novel was missing the spark of Reid’s debut. The beginning of the book slogs a bit as we get convo after convo with no real narrative action. I have no problem with unlikeable characters, but Agatha tested my patience, even with the reveals in her backstory. While the “big” moments held narrative weight, they still didn’t combine into an even whole.

All that said, Reid’s writing is an absolutely fresh voice in contemporary fiction. Although this one didn’t fully connect with me, I’m very much looking forward to what she writes next.

Thanks to @netgalley and @putnambooks for the gifted copy in exchange for a review.

Absolutely captivating read! From the first page to the last, I was completely engrossed. Definitely a must-read for any book lover!

This was an interesting one! Different than what I usually read, but still one that I finished. I didn't love it--definitely a character driven story.

Thank you NetGalley and Kiley Reid!

If you read and loved Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson, I think you'll love Come and Get It. This book isn't a page-turning thriller, its not a romance, it really doesn't have a plot at all -- it is a social observation of women, money, culture, and youth. It follows the lives of three women at the University of Arkansas: Agatha, the visiting professor, Millie, the RA, and Kennedy, the transfer student.

We first meet Agatha as she leads a discussion on weddings with a group of girls from the University but quickly becomes fascinated by their relationship to money, from the allowances they get from their parents, to the on-campus jobs they do, and the "practice paychecks" they get from their dads business. I noted while reading that I once had a friend who also had "practice paychecks" from her dad. Too real.

Agatha begins turning this conversation into a popular feature in Teen Vogue, and enlists Millie's help in getting more content by listening to the girls conversations through Millie's room's wall in the dorm. Agatha, at times, thinks about the unethical ways she is getting the information for her pieces but never actually regrets doing it. On the other side of the wall is Kennedy's room. Kennedy is a transfer student who left her previous school after a traumatic event and comes to the University of Arkansas with a good helping of social anxiety and never truly fitting in. This is all exemplified when Kennedy is invited to a BBQ with a new friend from class, but can't get through the mixed text messages of logistics, and so, ends up at Target putting things she doesn't need in her shopping cart. Again, too real.

I loved this book. I know it won't be for anyone, but it was a five star read for me.

Kiley Reid's Come and Get It is about a group of women whose lives intersect at a dorm at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Agatha is a researcher, non-fiction writer, and visiting English professor. Millie is a college senior and residence hall advisor. They're joined by a cast of young women living in the same suite in the dorm.

Agatha's research is the vehicle Reid uses to take a critical look at the role of money, race, and privilege in the college experience. Agatha's ethics as a researcher and writer exposes additional problems, and Agatha's relationship with Millie is fraught with complexities, particularly about age and power.

For me, Come and Get It was a character exploration. I would have appreciated more development of the minor characters; they sometimes felt stereotypical and one-dimensional. There was development and change in Agatha and Millie, but the changes they experienced were not positive and came with big implications for career and personal life for both of them.

"Come and Get It" is a fun novel that offers a glimpse into the lives of characters navigating the complexities of modern existence, and college life. Reid's sharp wit and keen insight shines through, as she explores themes of desire, money, and greed with unflinching honesty. The novel captivates with its authenticity and depth, leaving a lasting impression on the reader. Reid's sophomore novel is a great read for fans of contemporary fiction.

This started out like a juicy gossipy kind of romp, but I think maybe it took itself too seriously or I just missed the plot. I didn’t love the idea of a professor (?) doing the things that she did for her book, or was it a book? I just didn’t vibe with this one.

Did not finish reading this book seeing as I was unable to find it interesting in the first several pages. Will revisit at a later point.

I think I lost the plot, but not sure if there was ever one to begin with? Despite the fact that the story revolved primarily around tension and minor conflict, I still very much enjoyed Reid's writing and unpacking the complex emotions and actions of these characters.