Wardini Book Review: Come and Get It – Kiley Reid (Bloomsbury, $36.99)

Come and Get It by New York Times bestseller Kiley Reid.

REVIEW

Millie has a modest dream – to own a little yellow house down by the train tracks. She works and saves and studies and takes care of the students under her watch as a resident assistant at the University of Arkansas.

Into her life strides Professor Agatha Paul, a writer and tutor whose project on wedding culture is stalling.

Millie’s students provide inspiration, but of an unexpected kind. The university hall of residence is Belgrade Dormitory, widely acknowledged as inferior, a bit shabby.

The three students Agatha is beguiled by are Casey, Jenna and Tyler, young women of such strong characterisation that the reader becomes equally as beguiled.

Agatha’s snap assessment rubs off on the reader: ‘Jenna: tall. Casey: Southern. Tyler: mean.’

This is a story about money: the getting, the spending, the attitudes toward it. Who has it, who does not, and how the power in relationships shifts accordingly.

Millie is clever and sensible until her head is turned by Agatha: older, sophisticated and somewhat ruthless. It’s as if Agatha is playing at being in Arkansas, and those around her not quite real, just there for her to play with.

The characters are exquisitely drawn through interior monologue and dialogue. The students are delightfully self-absorbed, their concerns and interests for the most part trivial.

Casey’s roommates, Kennedy and Peyton, bring extra personality and backstory that draws the reader in further, as if we were living in the dorm, a fly on the wall who sees everything.

Decisions are made, consequences play out, lessons are, perhaps, learned.

Come and Get It is as readable as a soap is watchable, smartly plotted and absorbing, a page turner peopled by convincing characters in the uniquely hopeful and stressful setting of a university.

A thoroughly absorbing, tightly written and satisfying read.