Kiley Reid's debut, SUCH A FUN AGE, was a closely observed, thoroughly contemporary novel of manners, touching on issues of race, class and privilege in new and eye-opening ways. It's no wonder that it was a Reese's Book Club selection and a New York Times bestseller, as well as a feature on many best books of the year lists. Now Reid is back with her sophomore novel (pun totally intended), COME AND GET IT, which applies her interest in social dynamics and contemporary culture and brings it to campus.

"[Reid's] narrative quite intentionally shines a light on the extent to which consumerism and brand names have permeated American priorities and preoccupations."

The book opens without much preamble, instead bringing readers into a makeshift interview room in a University of Arkansas dormitory. With the cooperation of senior resident assistant Millie Cousins, writer and visiting faculty member Agatha Paul has set up a series of interviews with three female students. Agatha, whose earlier books were on the economics of birthdays and of funerals, is planning to write a third book on weddings. But as she talks to the young women, she realizes that she's much less interested in their attitudes about weddings than she is in their remarks --- many of them unintentionally revealing --- about money and consumption.

It's clear that Reid herself is also interested in these issues, and her narrative quite intentionally shines a light on the extent to which consumerism and brand names have permeated American priorities and preoccupations. These pages are full of dozens of brand names, as if to illustrate the impossibility of talking about contemporary culture without them.

But COME AND GET IT is also a character study that focuses on three separate characters and the ways in which their personal desires intersect with economic ones. In Millie's case, a desire for financial stability and independence --- symbolized by her single-minded dedication to saving up to buy a house --- causes her to make some poor decisions with unintended consequences for others.

Agatha also lets her own ambition (not to mention a recently broken heart) lead her down an ethically questionable path. When her (anonymized and lightly edited) interviews with three of Millie's advisees get picked up by Teen Vogue, her writing attracts more attention than her more serious academic publications ever received. In search of new and juicier material, she takes to eavesdropping on students through the thin walls of Millie's dorm room.

The third primary character is Kennedy, a new transfer student who is still recovering from a traumatic experience at her old university. She found solace in one of Agatha's earlier books on grief, but she's also desperately lonely and worried she's never going to fit in.

In all three of these characters' cases, seemingly small decisions carry lasting repercussions, often in unintended and surprising ways. Undergirding everything are issues of money and materialism, race and class, when enough is enough…or when it's all just too much.