Book Review: Fresh by Margot Wood

‘Fresh’ by Margot Wood was released in 2021 and follows the story of Elliot McHugh as she begins the next stage of life: Freshman Year at Emerson College. Before she left Cincinnati for Boston, having lived with her seemingly perfect sister, Izzy, who is studying medicine, and her younger sister, Remy, who has an eclectic obsession with dryer sheets, Elliot was betrayed by the people she held closest to her. Her ex-boyfriend cheated on her for months, and her three best friends knew and didn’t tell her. Vulnerable, alone, and seeking fun, sex, and freedom, Elliot is ready for a new adventure.

However, this book does contain events that may prove triggering to readers, which explore sexual assault. I was happy with how Wood dealt with this issue, and how the implications of the assault weren’t just washed away with a good cry, but it is worth keeping this fact in mind before reading.

‘Fresh’ explores common college experiences: from befriending people at the beginning to casual hookups, first relationships, drinking culture, consent, and sexuality. The book is incredibly sex-positive. I loved that. Elliot isn’t ashamed of enjoying sex, and after such a devastating breakup in High School, she’s looking for inconsequential hookups.

Something I adored about this book was Wood’s use of character voice. Elliot’s internal monologue is immensely relatable, how she addresses how much alcohol is enough, how she reacts to music playing at a house party, and how the blend of stream of consciousness and erratic thoughts, particularly when she’s off her ADHD meds, blends with her attention to detail and description of what is happening. There is so much about Elliot that I can relate to, having gone to university. I met my best friend in our first class of our first year, where I complimented her shirt, and on the second day, on an optional course excursion, I befriended two more of the girls I would spend almost every waking moment with because I offered them suncream in 32-degree heat. What can I say? Offering Cheez-Itz in exchange for friendship is a perfect demonstration of the student psyche.  

Silly as it sounds, I found that a key element to Elliot’s character voice was her use of the concept of “tender chicken” and how the term became a staple of Elliot’s vocabulary.

“Tender chicken is a McHugh-coined term that means a lady wood, a female hard-on, a girl-boner. The origin of the term is this: Remy invented the phrase when she was eight years old, Izzy and I went down to the basement one day where we saw Remy sitting on a pillow while watching a show. She said: ‘Whenever I see two people kissing on the TV, I get tender chicken, and have to put a pillow between my legs.’ And in that moment, a legend was born.”

We are introduced to it in Chapter Two, and it’s mentioned all the way to the last page. Not only is it a light-hearted sex-positive way to discuss arousal, but it’s also a funny reflection of how terms in your house become phrases you just happen to use every day. We have tonnes in my house, and I’m sure everyone has one or two.

Like I said, this phrase is used a lot, because in a bid to stand out and succeed in her Love and Eroticism In Western Culture class, at the advice of a Sophmore, Monica, to make the essay personable, she writes about casual sex, analyses these sexual encounters, kinks, etc., and is incredibly proud of what she produced. This decision has immense implications for what remains of her Freshman Year, and her GPA. Elliot dubs it: Project Tender Chicken.

This project takes over her mind, and she is so honed in on it, she neglects to study for her other classes, depending on her methods of High School cramming. Only for her efforts to be thwarted by a snowstorm, which bumps up her Fall Semester Finals by a week, giving her just days to cram the content for four class finals.

Then she gets her grades back. As a neurodivergent person, this part of the book is such a relatable moment. She had been so hyper-focused on Project Tender Chicken, the implications, etc. that she honed in on just one element of the syllabus and didn’t explore her idea within the material they learned about during the semester. And due to her diligence to making Project Tender Chicken the best it could be, she neglected the rest of her classes and didn’t offer them the same attention. Something I have done many times.

I loved how sex-positive this book was, too. I loved how Elliot wasn’t considered a slut by her best friends for wanting to enjoy sex, and how casual Elliot’s character is about sexuality. I hated that although when Elliot is initially assaulted by a friend’s partner, she is blamed. But I was glad someone came to help her. Rose, her RA, who doesn’t judge her, and offers her comfort and support both in that moment, but also when it came to reporting the person who assaulted her. But unfortunately, Elliot’s friend’s reaction to what she perceives as being cheated on with her best friend is certainly true to life. I loved how Wood used Rose’s character as a complicated, nuance figure who is in awe of Elliot, and cares for her.

I feel like the assault and how the characters cope with it, and how Wood navigated this was ultimately positive. Elliot begs her friend to at least speak to Rose about the situation, since her boyfriend dumped her and left the school in lieu of the assault. Seeing the characters rally together and support one another as they attempt to help one another was refreshing.

Furthermore, then there’s the idea of slut shaming, and the implications of Elliot’s flings. I found the way that Elliot navigated casual sex to be a defence mechanism, which she later acknowledges herself, and how she truly doesn’t realise what she’s done to her sexual partners, i.e., ghosting them after a one-night-stand is wrong, and hurtful until she does it to someone she was dating. And she owns up to her mistake after a humiliating experience, and apologises. The consequences of her ghosting people are nasty, and cruel, and I hated that Elliot was publicly slut shamed by someone, at a charity auction for dates with attractive people – which she was basically forced to do, because someone dropped out last-minute, but she took that embarrassing moment as an opportunity to address something she’d done that was hurtful. I loved that. Learn from your mistakes, Elliot!

It was such a satisfying story, with a delightful ending! It was so rewarding. I couldn’t wait to see whether Elliot would finally admit that she had inadvertently been crushing on her RA the whole time, and that, unsurprisingly, Rose reciprocated. It was so positive and lovely. I can and would happily scream praise for this book from the rafters day in and day out. I’d wholeheartedly recommend it!