Fresh
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- £3.49
Publisher Description
"A hilarious, heartfelt, and realistic coming-of-age story." —Buzzfeed
"Hilarious and heartwarming." —Popsugar
“A laugh-out-loud and vulnerable coming-of-age story.” —The Nerd Daily
[Movie trailer narrator voice]: In a world, where humanity has crumbled—wait, no, wrong story. Sorry! Let’s try that again.
[YA movie trailer narrator voice:] Some students enter their freshman year of college knowing exactly what they want to do with their lives. Elliot McHugh isn’t one of those people. But picking a major is the last thing on Elliot’s mind when she’s too busy experiencing all that college has to offer—from dancing all night at off-campus parties to testing her RA Rose’s patience to making new friends to having the best sex one can have on a twin-size dorm-room bed.
But she may not be ready for the fallout when reality hits. When the sex she’s having isn’t that great. When finals creep up and smack her right in the face. Or when her roommate’s boyfriend turns out to be the biggest a-hole.
Elliot may make epic mistakes, but if she’s honest with herself (and with you, dear reader), she may just find the person she wants to be. And maybe even fall in love in the process . . . Well, maybe. We’re not promising anything. We can’t give everything away ahead of time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wood's charming but uneven debut, a loose retelling of Austen's Emma, is a sex-positive romp through freshman college life. Set at Boston's Emerson College, it traces Elliot McHugh's evolution from insecure and self-absorbed to assured and affectionate. Well-meaning but unaware of her privilege, Elliot, who's white and queer, immediately takes up a regimen of parties and sex upon arriving at university; instead of homework and declaring a major, she nearly fails all her classes. Meanwhile, she introduces her Armenian roommate, scholarship student Lucy Garabedian, to snobbish classmate Kenton Parker—who sexually assaults Elliot at an off-campus party. Amid the fallout, she realizes that she must take responsibility for her education; mend her relationship with Lucy, who's misunderstood the situation; and learn vulnerability as a friend and lover. Elliot's narration breaks the fourth wall often, through footnotes and "dear reader" interjections; in places, this technique works, but lengthy footnote asides frequently interrupt the reading experience ("Have I told you, dear reader, how much I love you lately?"). Even so, strong secondary characters, including Elliot's precocious younger sister and her matter-of-fact RA, reveal Elliot's strengths and flaws, and character discussions around consent and sexual discovery ring true. Ages 14–up.
