It almost seems as if Fate has set Rob up for a major life lesson: how can he hate his father for stealing the townsfolk's money when Rob is now just as guilty of theft, albeit on a much smaller scale?

The attention to detail, the character development, the way she’s able to provide different perspectives on certain topics that show that things aren’t always as they seem… I just love it. What I loved most of all about this story was that it was so darn believable. Not just the storyline but the way the characters dealt with (or not dealing with) the things that were thrown at them. The way it ended. It was realistic without being overly so.

Maegan made a mistake and it's followed her around ever since. Not only that, she's carrying around a secret of her sisters. Rob's father got caught doing something illegal and he's carried that stain ever since, along with dealing with caring for his dad now that he's unable to do so himself after a failed suicide attempt. Both of their lives are heavy. They are different, but connect on this level no one else understands. What I like is that by the end of it, these characters aren’t healed. But they are on their way to carving their own path after having been beaten down and harshly and unfairly judged. When a partnered project comes up and no one wants to partner with either of them, Rob and Meaghan are forced to work together.

Armistice Day: A Collection of Remembrance - Spark Interest and Educate Children about Historical Moments

Top Contributors

Call It What You Want hasn't even been on my TBR for a year and I was so freaking excited to dive into it this month. Oh lord, I needed something cute and fluffy from all the super depressing books I've been reading lately. In it, you will meet Maegan and Rob. Over on Rob's side we have his ex-best friend bullying him and trying to humiliate him in fr I devoured this book in less than 24 hours, which is a pretty rare occurrence for me now that I have both a teenager and a toddler in the house. Falling in love with Rob and Maegan was so easy to do. Brigid Kemmerer is brilliant at creating these scruffy underdog characters with complex layers who are undervalued and underappreciated by the people around them. I wonder what it’s like to watch other kids hand over disposable cash when you’re condemned to eat cheese sandwiches every day. then there’s the drinking. i understand that they are college kids and i’m not so i don’t understand but it’s not okay to normalize the amount of drinking they did. every chapter they drank at least 4-5 drinks everywhere they went. every-time she came home it was three glasses of wine. every-time she went out, it was 5 drinks and 3 shots. it was just a lot of unnecessary drinking. the only time she wasn’t drinking was at school or work and no one thought it was a problem. the book was normalizing the excessive drinking and it wasn’t okay.

When Rob and Maegan are paired together for a calculus project, they’re both reluctant to let anyone through the walls they’ve built. But when Maegan learns of Rob’s plan to fix the damage caused by his father, it could ruin more than their fragile new friendship . . . What I loved about this book is that it’s much more than a contemporary romance. The romance is a subplot instead of taking center part, while characters and difficult subjects are explored thoroughly. This story had a lot going on at one point, but then suddenly, towards the end, all kinds of balls just seemed to drop down to the ground with a thud. (Spoiler alert: Yes, Maegan confronted Rachel and Drew and made them admit they had been unfair to Rob, and she also stood up to Samantha's lecherous prof in front of an auditorium full of students, but that last scene seemed a bit out of character and, frankly, way over-the-top melodramatic. How is poor Samantha supposed to return to college after that Jerry Springer-like type of reveal?! Maegan: *throwing her shirt into a hot tub* WHO CARES ABOUT GOING SLOW I'M GOING TO HAVE "PG-13 FANTASIES" (<---actual quote from book)

LoveReading4Kids Says

Rob because his father embezzled millions from the town's people and Maegan because she cheated on her STAT forcing her classmates to retake the test again as all results were invalidated. Another gem of a friendship that appears in the book is between Rob and Owen. Owen is a loner and he’s also poor, so poor that he can’t even afford to buy lunch at school. Owen’s struggles are, in part, due to what Rob’s father did, so a friendship between Owen and Rob seems nearly impossible and yet Kemmerer works her magic and creates yet another amazing friendship for me to smile about. I actually adored Owen’s character so much that I’d love to see him with a book of his own at some point. One mistake can change your whole life, the way you’re viewed, and can influence each new decision you have to make, and we get to see what the aftermath is like for both someone who made a one-time mistake that marred their chances of getting into ANY college when they were a shoe-in before, and someone who didn’t do anything wrong, nor know anything about it, yet pays the steady cost of betrayal every day, both at school and, more devastatingly, in his own home. Everyone thinks of Maegan as a typical overachiever, but she has a secret of her own after the pressure got to her last year. And when her sister comes home from college pregnant, keeping it from her parents might be more than she can handle.