I’m a fan of romance any time of year, but I don’t want to let February go by without highlighting a favorite (or two, stay tuned for next week!). Emma Lord is on my must-read list since I devoured her PNW-set YA You Have a Match, and I was thrilled to see she had a new book, Begin Again, out at the end of January.
When Andie Rose shows up at Blue Ridge State as a second semester transfer (after failing to get in the first time around), she’s hoping to surprise her high school boyfriend, Connor, and finally get her life plan on track. She’s not expecting to discover that Connor has his own surprise for her: he’s transferred to Little Fells Community College to be with her. She and Connor decide to make the best of it at their respective schools for a semester. Through her warm-hearted “fix-it” nature and liberal dispersal of snack cakes, Andie soon builds a community for herself in her new home, from her book-loving roommate Shay, to her sleep-deprived RA Milo, to her math-whiz-queer-fantasy-writing tutor Valeria. When Andie inadvertently stumbles upon the underground radio station founded by the mother who died when she was young, she wants to follow in her mother’s footsteps. But new places and new things have a way of upending even the most perfect of plans, and Andie begins to see that the life she had planned for herself — and the way that she hoped to live up to her mother’s legacy — might be hiding a pain she hasn’t been willing to face. Not to mention a long-distance relationship with an increasingly distracted Connor and some confusing feels for her handsomely rumpled caffeine-addicted RA.
Begin Again is a cozy blanket of a book and Andie is the kind of friend anyone would love to have. She’s someone with the empathetic energy to genuinely want to help other people improve their lives with measurable steps and the requisite stubbornness to see it through. She’s also self-aware enough to see how she’s protected herself from processing her grief over her mom. I loved the journey she goes on in this book, discovering capabilities, learning to let her friends help her, and prioritizing herself over her need to “fix” things for other people. Emma Lord has once again created a cast of characters to fall in love with and I just wish I could spend even more time with them. For anyone wanting a nostalgic escape, Begin Again is a delightful read!
— Lori, Island Books, Mercer Island, WA