Come As You Are

• Author: Dahlia Adler
• Genre: YA Romance 
• Publication Date: May 27, 2025
• Publisher: Wednesday Books

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Hot on the heels of a broken heart, Everett “Evie” Riley arrives at Camden Academy ready for a new beginning – one far away from her cheating ex-boyfriend, the sister who stole him, and the best friend who let it happen. But her fresh start is stopped in its tracks when she’s accidentally placed in an all-boys dorm, with no choice but to stay.

When rumors and gossip about Evie’s housing predicament spread like wildfire, she decides the only way to survive is to lean into her questionable new reputation… but she’s definitely going to require help. Her grumpy emo dorm mate Salem Grayson isn’t exactly her first choice, but he does need her help to repair his relationship with his parents every bit as much as she needs his to learn how to be cool. And so they make a pact – he’ll teach her how to be bad, if she teaches him how to be good.

It’s a flawless plan, except while Salem thrives academically, even romantically, and – annoyingly enough – even physically, Evie’s quest feels like one dead end after another, and the girl she’s becoming certainly doesn’t feel remotely cool. But when Evie realizes what she wants more than anything, she’ll have to contend with her thrice-broken heart and figure out how to become someone capable of chasing happiness.

Dahlia Adler’s Come As You Are is about refusing to accept less than you deserve, and realizing that the best relationships are with people who know exactly who you are.

I’ve read a few of Adler’s books, and as far as YA romance goes, they are a highlight of the genre for me. One of my favorite aspects of her books has also been the fantastic LGBTQ and Jewish representation present in each one that I’ve read. I was excited to read this one during Jewish American Heritage month and feature it on my blog.

Growing up, I went to summer camp with a girl named Ryan. I’ve known a few male Leslies, and one of my close friends chose to name her daughter Ryan. So I know better than to assume a person’s gender simply by looking at their name. However, the staff at Camden Academy didn’t get the memo. Everett Owen Riley is summarily placed into a boy’s dormitory when she arrives at the swanky boarding school, despite listing her gender as female and her preference for one of three female dorms. Unfortunately, all of the dorms are filled and she has no choice but to stay in the males dorm.

After a devastating breakup and the subsequent implosion of her life, Evie can’t bear to return to her school. Instead, she found a boarding school that offered enough financial aid for it to be a manageable expense for her parents. Once there, she has the opportunity to reinvent herself, but being placed in a boys dorm throws her for a loop. It isn’t long before pretty much the whole school knows her as the girl living in a boys dorm, and she’s already the subject of rumors and curious stares, so she figures the best thing to do is to lean into the situation. The only problem is, as a lifelong good girl, she doesn’t know how to be bad. Naturally, she finds Salem, a bad boy in need of someone to help him clean up his act, and agrees to teach him how to be good if he teaches her how to be bad. 

Salem turns out to be one half of an emo-goth pair of twins, along with his sister, Sabrina. Along the way, Evie learns how to harness her bad-girl side, while also still trying to be somewhat good. One of the things that I really liked seeing was the way that she had her own well-developed moral code, and how she never lost sight of her morals. Evie shows so much growth over the course of the book, and the friends to lovers trope is written wonderfully here.

I was surprised and yes, maybe a little disappointed, that Evie wasn’t queer or Jewish, since I’ve never read a Dahlia Adler book where queer Jews are front and center. However, she managed to work in a character who is both queer and Jewish, and she gets a lot of page time (and her own romance). I really enjoyed seeing how Salem and Evie got to know each other first as partners in a deal, but that it gradually shifted into friendship as they actually started to warm up to each other. 

Overall, this is a really sweet romance that I enjoyed reading, and found myself eager to get back to it when I had to put it down. Despite the lighthearted feel of the story, there are some deeper themes of trust and betrayal, self-discovery and self-acceptance, learning to face adversity, and balancing her responsibilities with a newfound sense of freedom. It’s easy to like Evie, although I suspect she wasn’t viewing herself through the lens of the reader, or Salem for that matter. But in the end, this turned out to be very much what I expect out of Adler’s books, and I couldn’t be happier. 

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