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Come and Get It
From the celebrated New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age comes a fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students.
It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue.
A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption, and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior--and the highly anticipated new novel by acclaimed and award-winning author Kiley Reid.
These book club questions are from the publisher, Penguin Random House.
Book club questions for Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.
Come and Get It illustrates the intricacies of roommate living. Share your best (read: worst) roommate horror story. In what ways did Kennedy, Peyton, and Tyler’s dynamic resonate with an experience you’ve had? How important is it to the story that author Kiley Reid pens a roommate trio?
Come and Get It is set at a state college in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and none of the main characters are from there. How did the different characters’ origins—Millie, Agatha, Kennedy—inform, and perhaps defy, your expectations? Could this story have been set elsewhere? Discuss.
Come and Get It explores desire, entitlement, and consumption within a capitalist society. Discuss how the characters, particularly Kennedy, Agatha, and Millie, are each compelled by these, and specifically by their respective stages of life.
Kennedy, haunted by her past, transfers to Arkansas for a fresh start. Why do you think Reid made her characters transfer students? How does Millie’s position as a fifth-year RA interact with the setup of the story?
Reid writes about cultural norms with great incision, humor, and accessibility. In Come and Get It, she casts her sharp eye on college students, observing their motivations, desires, and the insecurities that often evolve into external obstacles. How did you see Agatha’s understanding of this subgroup? Why did she take such an interest, and do you think she “got” their motivations?
Tyler is vital to the dorm’s unraveling, yet she is only depicted through the eyes of the other characters. Discuss why you think Reid chose to illustrate Tyler in this way.
Come and Get It is described as a story about “illicit intrigue,” “bad behavior,” and “reckless abandon.” To what extent are freedom—general and financial—and morality illustrated in opposition in this novel?
Kennedy’s room is filled with materialistic items—a way for her to feel safe in her new environment. Discuss how else Reid evokes the idea of “taking up space.” In what ways do each of the characters hold authority over the space they’re in?
Kennedy experiences two horrifying events through the course of the novel. Discuss to what extent these accidents are deemed as such. Why?
Come and Get It culminates in a shocking calamity. What was your reaction to this scene? To what extent did you see this coming?
The cover of Come and Get It features an illustration of a pig. How do you interpret this image against the themes of the novel?
Come and Get It Book Club Questions PDF
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