Hello everyone! April is going to be a very hectic month for me, but I just wanted to post a mini review of a book I read recently which was Begin Again by Emma Lord. It’s been a while since I read a proper rom-com book (I think this is the first proper rom-com I am reading this year). I just picked it up on my last visit to the bookstore, not knowing anything about it except that it was a rom-com.
This book follows Andie, who transfers from her community college to Blue Ridge State. She has crafted for herself a very detailed description of all the steps she should take to achieve her life goal of becoming a self-help figure. But the moment she reaches Blue Ridge State, all her plans are disrupted. The rest of the story just follows her semester at Blue Ridge, her making friends and finding herself.
Before we continue, there is a very slight spoiler in this review, but this comes within the first 100 pages of the book, and knowing this won’t change the experience in any way. So, I don’t really consider this a spoiler, but still, I’m letting you know right now. Okay, let’s get to the review.
The characters and their interactions with each other are the best parts of the book. Andie is by herself a very sweet character. We follow her as she tries to follow her mother’s legacy and along the way, she has to deal with her estranged father. This offers a good perspective of how each person deals with grief differently, and the impact this can have on them as well as others around them. A lot of these small side plots really help build her character throughout the story.
Not just the main character, but even the side characters have distinct storylines in this book. The author has done a great job of weaving the side characters’ plots into the main one, while also keeping them individually relevant so that every character felt real and not like cardboard cutouts. Andie has a bookstagrammer friend, Shay, as well as a writer friend, Valeria, which was honestly so cool!
As I mentioned before, part of the plot is all about Andie walking in her mother’s footsteps and she finds herself as part of the underground campus radio show that her mother founded called the Knights’ Watch along with Shay and Milo (this is the spoiler I mentioned at the beginning of the review) The segments about the show were really fun to read about and it was interesting to see how Andie solved people’s problems and how this characteristic of hers plays a major role in who she is as a person and what she does in her life.
In the end, there was something akin to a plot twist in the end, and even though I did not exactly guess it, it wasn’t too shocking. It did a great job of bringing the friends closer and was kind of the last thread that changed Andie completely.
The writing in the book was chill and light, and I think that this book would make an amazing Netflix movie. It has the right amount of drama, quirky and cute characters, a simple and fun romance, and a diverse cast of characters all neatly wrapped together in a straightforward plot.
All that being said, I did have a slight issue with the pacing in the first half of the book. The first part of the book basically tries to introduce the reader to the characters and the central plot. But I found that it took forever to get to the point, and that was kind of the problem. I know some people like this kind of pacing, but it just wasn’t for me. The pacing does get better after that, but the first 100 pages were very hard to get through.
Overall, I had a great time. I enjoyed this and will be reading more Emma Lord books. And if this ever gets made into a Netflix movie, I will definitely watch it! I gave this book 3.75/ 5 stars.
Thanks for reading! Hope you liked the review. Do follow me on Bookstagram and Goodreads for more bookish content!
LINKS:
The soulful scripturient 