Item: You Say It First
Rating: 3.00
Author: girlinthepages

by Katie Cotugno

An addictive, irresistible YA novel about two teens from different worlds who fall for each other after a voter registration call turns into a long-distance romance—from Katie Cotugno, the New York Times bestselling author of 99 Days. Perfect for fans of Mary H.K. Choi, Robin Benway, and Nicola Yoon.

One conversation can change everything.

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?

You Say It First is a propulsive, layered novel about how sometimes the person who has the least in common with us can be the one who changes us most.

You Say It First actually made it on my most anticipated books of 2020 list after I read and immensely enjoyed Katie Cotugno's 99 Days and 9 Days and 9 Nights. However while I enjoyed her latest novel (and loved the cover!) it lacked the edge that I so loved from her previous books.

The story follows Meg, a perfect, Type A student who works phonebanking at a voter registration call center and who's world seems perfect from the outside but has some deep fissures forming behind the scenes. She meets Colby, a bit of an aimless soul dealing with the grief of losing his father, during this phonebanking and one conversation turns to many which turns into a full-fledged virtual relationship. Meg and Colby's relationship was extremely relatable for Millenials and Gen Z'ers in some ways, because who among us hasn't had a high school relationship that was (at least at first) primarily conducted via text/phone calls/Myspace? It was also very timely to see Meg and Colby have real, honest discussions about their political views which leaned left for Meg and mostly apathetic for Colby. However, I was often frustrated by elements of the story, particularly Meg's aversion to ever admitting she was upset by anything and Colby's self-sabotaging ways. This story also just felt timid to me in terms of the topics it dealt with compared to the previous Cotugno books I've read, where she really took some hard teenage concepts and confronted them head on and I feel like this book was about having to drag the scandal out of the characters who were intent on masking the drama in their lives.

Overall: I enjoyed You Say It First and really respected the way the political element was handled, and think it's a great book for anyone exploring the political landscape and how involved they want to be. However, it's not my favorite of Cotugno's novels.

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You Say It First

by Katie Cotugno

Reviewed by girlinthepages on Aug 8, 2020

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