Anna's Reviews > Begin Again

I mean, the cutest. ✨

Emma Lord, please consider this review my petition to be your best friend. Like, I follow you on social media and I think we would have a great time baking brownies made with five different types of Oreos while belting out Taylor Swift lyrics at the top of our lungs. Hit me up.

Honestly, the reason I love Emma’s books so much (and actually go back to reading YA for her when that’s not really my jam anymore) is that reading them feels like sipping on hot chocolate wearing your coziest pajamas while Taylor Swift plays in the background (I feel a recurrence of Taylor Swift on this review but I’m just rolling with it – the book is called Begin Again, after all *wink wink*).

Her writing is so colorful and whimsical, and her heroines genuinely feel like your best friends who are so funny and quick and smart and fun and also just need a hug and a word of advice.

This is the story of Andie, who dreamed of attending the college her parents went to but didn’t get in on the first try, unlike her jock boyfriend, Connor. Mid freshman year, she finally earns a spot and transfers in secret so Connor will be surprised. Except, once she gets there, she finds out he did the same thing – transferred to the community college she had been attending to surprise her.

Things are clearly not off to a great start, but Andie will not be deterred. As she’s wont to do, she starts to do the thing she’s best at – fixing other people’s problems. She decides to help her new roommate Shay find a major, help her new (very cute) sleep deprived RA Milo lay off his coffee addiction, help her boyfriend get into one of the school’s secret societies once he manages to transfer back by collecting enough ribbons for him (since having enough ribbons is the only way to enter into the societies and he’s obviously not there to do it himself), and on it goes.

While all of that is happening, we also get to know about Andie’s mom who passed away and her dad who pretty much checked out when she needed him most. A teenager making sense of a very complex family dynamic is an Emma Lord staple which has kind of gotten larger and even more complex with each book she has published.

Like all of Emma’s heroines, Andie is sparkly and fun-loving and thrives in the sphere of a complicated dessert. Her relationship with the girlfriends she makes is so heart-warming and positive, and her growing affection for Milo is so delicious to read.

I feel like a staple of YA is a teenager just *realizing things* (please picture Kylie Jenner saying this, iykyk) all the time, and that’s fairly the last 35% of this book, which is why I’m giving it four stars instead of five. It was a little exhausting having Andie realize *this* about her mom and *this* about her dad and *this* about her roommate and *this* about her boyfriend and *this* about Milo; like, there were so many deep, long-winded, emotional thoughts and feelings about stuff that it became a little too much for me. But it’s entirely possible that it was not excessive at all and I just haven’t read YA in a long time! Either way, I promise it was beautiful and I loved it and you should read it, it was just a tiny bit annoying when Andie went on to find like the seventh person she was going to have an emotional realization about.

Anyway. My point is, Emma Lord is the best and you should read this book and follow her on Twitter immediately.