Andie Rose is so excited to transfer to her first-choice school, really her only-choice school, midway through her freshman year. She had worked so hard to get there, and that first semester at the community college gave her a good foundation for the academically challenging Blue Ridge State. Plus, it means she’ll finally be at school with her boyfriend Connor. She’s so excited to surprise him when she shows up at last.
It turns out that she’s the one surprised, when Connor calls her to let her know that he’s transferred to their hometown community college to be closer to her. Suddenly, Andie’s idea to keep her transfer a surprise doesn’t seem like such a great plan. But she’s at Blue Ridge State now, and she’s not leaving. This has been her dream her entire life. It’s where her parents met, where her mother ran an underground radio show as the original Knight, and where they joined a secret society. Andie’s mother died when Andie was young, so following in her mother’s footsteps is incredibly important to her.
Andie has her future planned out. She’s going to study psychology, write a memoir, and then get her own television show. But first, she has to get through the class that is the gateway for the psych program—statistics. Andie also has to go to the ribbon events—in order to get into one of the secret societies, she has to collect ribbons at a series of events set up by the student committees. The details for the ribbon events are announced every day on the underground radio show by the current Knight. Andie knows all about the show, and about the Knights, because the original Knight was her mother.
As Andie struggles with stats and getting to her ribbon events, she’s also making a splash at the dorm. Her RA, Milo, is addicted to strong coffee and walks around like a zombie. But her roommate Shay is a book-loving influencer who can’t pick a major. She gathers everyone up for game night with promises of fun and an assortment of snack cakes, which is a huge success until Milo shows up asking them to respect the dorm’s Quiet Hours. She gets a job at the local bagel shop, and continues to write the advice column for her high school newspaper.
Andie is naturally sunny and prone to giving helpful advice, so others are drawn to her energy. Mile, addicted to his Eternal Darkness coffee blend, is reluctant to join in her orbit. But then she accidentally stumbles into his big secret—he’s the current Knight—she can’t help but see her mother’s photo, as the original Knight, in a place of honor and feel drawn to stay in the old office they use as the recording booth. And when she sees all the emails to the Knight that no one has answered, she uses her high-school advice column experience to start answering.
The weeks roll by, Andie collecting her ribbons and spending time with a stats tutor to try to make some progress in her worst class. She’s making friends, eating good food, and putting her best advice into the emails that come in for the Knight. In fact, her advice is getting pretty popular, and they even try taking some phone calls, with Andie typing up an answer Milo can read on the air. They try to get her to go live herself on the air, but her fear holds her back. She knows she could never live up to her mother’s legacy, and she’s pretty sure that it’s only because of her mother that she was allowed into the school at all.
When Milo oversleeps one day, in part because Andie replaced his Eternal Darkness with a caffeine-free version, she has to step in and take over the radio show. She finds that she’s able to get past her nerves for the most part, but she still feels inadequate to take on a role behind the mic. She blows her stat test, finds out that some of her advice has backfired in a way that’s damaged a potential relationship for Shay, fallen into the frozen lake, found out Connor’s been lying to her, and inadvertently announces a major secret to the entire school body. Will she be able to recover from all that to finish her first semester at Blue Ridge State strong, or will she just walk away and find somewhere else to start over?
Begin Again is the latest young adult novel from Emma Lord, whose books continue to entertain and inspire. Her characters are well drawn, with complex personalities and histories and goals. Her books are dense with story lines, creating compelling plots that unfold naturally, with lots of fun and sweet surprises along the way. This is her fourth novel, and she just keeps growing stronger as a writer.
I was thrilled for a chance to read a new Emma Lord book, and I was not disappointed in anything at all (except maybe for Andie’s father’s choice of bagel). Begin Again sparkles with wit and warmth, from the named chicken to the experiments Andie and Shay do to help Shay find her major to the bagel schmears. There is a playfulness to this story, but underneath that, Lord deals with serious topics like grief, relationships, forgiveness, and finding your own path.
Ever since I read her first book, Tweet Cute, I have expected her books to be dense. They feel twice as action packed as a typical ya book, and Begin Again is no different. There are so many subplots that there is always something happening. It’s hard to put the book down, even to get some snack cakes, because there is so much going on, I never want to stop reading, from page one to the end, so be sure to set aside a hefty block of time, get your snacks ready in advance, and settle in for one of the best books about college underground radio for a good purpose and indeterminate fruit flavors that you may ever read.
Egalleys for Begin Again were provided by Wednesday Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
