Call It What You Want – Brigid Kemmerer

Thank you to the publisher who gifted me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When Rob’s dad is caught embezzling funds from half of the town, he goes from popular lacrosse player to social pariah. Also, his father’s failed suicide attempt leaves Rob and his mother, responsible for his care.

Maegan is thought of as a typical overachiever by everyone, but she has a secret of her own after all the pressure got to her last year. When her sister comes home from college pregnant, keeping her secret from her parents might be more than she can handle.

When Maegan and Rob are paired together for a calculus project, they are both reluctant to let each other through the walls that they have built.

Brigid Kemmerer has done it once again and made me fall in love with her writing and stories even more. There is something about Brigid’s writing and stories that just grips hold of me tightly and doesn’t let go.

This book feel extremely real throughout. I feel this is exactly what I have come to expect from Brigid and her books. She writes about real life and it feels incredibly real. Rob and Maegan are two characters I became invested in as soon as I began reading their stories. They are completely different characters with completely different lives, learning to live as themselves after both facing huge milestones/issues in their lives.

It is safe to say this isn’t an easy book to read because of how dark it gets in places. With discussions of suicide, theft, abortion, embezzling and even more. These topics are covered extremely well, realistically and without glossing over the real-life aspect of the topics. Although this book covers difficult topics, it was an extremely fast-paced book that I flew through in a few days.

I enjoyed all the different story lines that were weaved throughout the book and how all the secondary characters played bigger parts than your usual secondary character. A personal favourite character of mine was Mr London, I won’t say why but his character is special! Rob and his story arc broke my heart, he has to deal with so much throughout the story. All the choices he made have clearly been thought out by the author and that shows. Maegan, although she frustrated me at times, was is also going through a lot and is excellent. Each characters personalities jump right off the page and I loved the character line up thoroughly.

It is evident whilst reading this book that a lot of thought and research has gone into each of the main characters story lines. Especially Rob’s story line with the money embezzling. Brigid mentions doing research in her acknowledgements and it is obvious in the book that research has been done. This helped make the book feel even more real and convincing.

Call It What You Want is a spectacular book that you will fly right through. It is beautifully written and feels extremely realistic. This book is heart-breaking, heart-warming and just a wonderful story to fly through.