If you enjoy reading almost 400 pages of diva drama, then this book might be for you. It is nothing but a bunch of teenage college students, mostly female, and the drama they create in their lives. There are a few points in the book that were interesting, but very few. Mostly the book was a chore to read and I was tempted to DNF it on multiple occasions.

There is very little plot to the book, just the everyday drama these drama queens create for themselves and their dorm mates. The book is set in a dormitory on the University of Arkansas campus. Most of the students are from out of state, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Iowa, etc. From that point, little happens until the end of the book. The characters were mostly unlikeable. I do not need for the characters to be likeable, but it would be nice to be able to relate and emphasize with them and their struggles. I could not have cared less what happens to these characters.

The book opens strangely with the introduction of Professor Agatha Paul, whom it seems will be a major character in the book. Then, she disappears for over 60 pages. I was left wondering what happened to this character who was so important that the book opened with her.

The major issues with the book is its length. It is too long, coming in at over 380 pages. At least 100 pages, or more, could have been cut. The book would have been a faster and tighter read. Also, there are too many characters in the book. I counted over 70 distinct characters. Every insignificant character was named in the book. This was too many characters to keep track of without writing them down, which I did, and it took four pages of paper to keep track of them.

In addition, there are a number of craft issues with the book. As the author is supposedly an Assistant Professor teaching creative writing at the University of Michigan, I would have expected a better result. I guess anyone can be a professor at the U. of Michigan. There are many point of view shifts, even within the same paragraph. Lots of head hopping. At one point, we are in Millie's head and in the very next sentence (same paragraph), we are told what another character is thinking. How does Millie know what they are thinking? There were also a lot of missing dialogue tags, so knowing who was speaking was next to impossible. This was confusing, especially when several people were together and speaking at the same time. The speaker was impossible to determine. Plus, other than one character, all of the characters spoke alike. People of different ages from different parts of the country do not speak alike. Thus the dialog was stilted and uncreative. There were a few misspelled words also. I guess the editor fell asleep while proofreading the text. There were also many incorrect and unclear pronoun antecedent agreement issues.

The worst part of the book was the ending. Several characters acted out of character so the author could quickly wrap up the book. The ending was neither believable nor credible. Had the ending been better, I might have given the book two stars for the few interesting parts. But unfortunately, it does not even deserve the one start minimum I had to give it. Don’t waste your time with this book, nor your money. ( )

I'm a total sucker for a campus novel (even I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, which everyone else hated), and this one has emphatically fascinating conflicts. Agatha is a successful gay Black author in her late thirties, who takes a sabbatical from her tension-filled marriage to a dancer for a short-term teaching assignment at flagship U of Arkansas Fayetteville, rife with football and sororities. There she meets Millie, a 24 year old Black RA who strives for financial independence and yearns to buy a house, after spending happy years watching home renovation shows with her devoted mom. Millie is responsible for a floor in a dorm that includes a single and a triple, populated by traumatized former baton twirler Kennedy and her three mean girl suitemates. Agatha's initial intent is to conduct research for her upcoming book about weddings by interviewing the mean girls, but she becomes fascinated by their lives and privilege and uses Millie as her tool to eavesdrop on the trio to create viral, episodic online output for Teen Vogue. And that's just the start of the intertwining semester-long fortunes of Agatha, Millie, and Kennedy, taking many dramatic pathways that lead to a satisfying ending. I'm not sure how this would work as an audiobook, with so many viewpoints expressed, but as an old-fashioned campus tell-all, it's a gem. ( )

I see that this book gets mixed reviews, you either love it or you hate it. Well, I loved it! I loved the characters and it was hard for me to stop reading. Ann Patchett says in her letter to the Signed First Edition readers, "...this is too much fun. This is maybe too delightful." And, she's so right, I also kept thinking about Millie, the heroine of this book and wondering how she was doing. So, I kept reading until I was finished! So happy I read this! ( )

Seldom do I read a book and want to go back to re read parts because it is so nuanced and complicated by multiple relationships. Sometimes after a great debut novel the following novel is not as good. This was excellent and I am not in college etc but this was excellent. Only one person really suffers. ( )

fiction - a 38y.o. white writer/professor Agatha Paul (fresh from a complicated, but more or less broken-up relationship with her Black dancer/spendthrift wife) meets a 24y.o. Black, super-senior and fiscally-responsible RA Millie Cousins (who took a year off to help her Glaucoma-suffering mother and save some money) at a primarily-white University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where Agatha is conducting research on the dorm residents for a new book, among them being white student Kennedy (with severe social anxiety) and Black scholarship student Peyton (likes cooking, but also fastidious about kitchen neatness), and their (less flatteringly portrayed roommate Tyler and her sorority friends). CW/TW: depression, severe anxiety, suicidal ideation.

Really interesting to eavesdrop on these fascinating people and learn the backstories of the main characters; then everything gets super messy -- more trauma than I would hope for, but still a riveting read. I'm left with mixed feelings about some of the characters and their actions and it does deal with various race/class/money issues, so I can see how this would make a good book club selection.

February 2024 bingo challenge: book club selection, takes place at a school over fall semester, autumn move-in day into December/start of Winter break. ( )