[Review] You Say It First - Katie Cotugno

Summary: Meg has her entire life set up perfectly: she and her best friend, Emily, plan to head to Cornell together in the fall, and she works at a voter registration call center in her Philadelphia suburb. But everything changes when one of those calls connects her to a stranger from small-town Ohio.

Colby is stuck in a rut, reeling from a family tragedy and working a dead-end job. The last thing he has time for is some privileged rich girl preaching the sanctity of the political process. So he says the worst thing he can think of and hangs up.

But things don’t end there.…

That night on the phone winds up being the first in a series of candid, sometimes heated, always surprising conversations that lead to a long-distance friendship and then—slowly—to something more. Across state lines and phone lines, Meg and Colby form a once-in-a-lifetime connection. But in the end, are they just too different to make it work? (Pub Date: Jun 16, 2020)


This is a 3+ read.

Meg is the kind of top student who is profoundly engaged, she even works for an organization pushing for people to register and vote. However, since her parents decided to divorce after a big fight in public, all she wants is not to cause another circus. A year later, she's dumped by her boyfriend exactly because they never fought, she's accepted to the school she was tog o with her friend but she doesn't want it anymore, among other things. The only person she can actually argue with at this point is Colby, a boy from an entirely different upbringing she met on the phone a state away from hers. And they're probably more similar than they suspected.

This book wasn't actually exciting, I didn't catch myself shipping the couple or anything—I didn't not want them together, either, though—, but it was such a pleasure to read! I can't describe or understand what made it so nice, but the writing surely had a good flow. Meg and Colby were from very different worlds and the book showed it perfectly, at the same time it showed they actually had a lot in common deep down.

This is a romance, but I feel it's more of a coming-of-age book that happens to bring a romance as the focus. As in, the romance is very prominent unlike your usual coming-of-age book, but the value in the book is in the coming of age plot. Meg needs to decide what she'll do about college and also face her issues relating both her parents and her best friend, and I liked a lot how it all ended.

I've read another book by this author, but I feel each had a charm of its own, while both had very interesting main characters, dealing with the challenges of growing up. It's a good bok, even if it won't make your heart race.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Edelweiss. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 3 out of 5.