Privilege: A Novel

Written by Mary Adkins

Narrated by Caitlin Kelly, Adenrele Ojo, Sophie Amoss and Graham Halstead

From the beloved author of When You Read This, a smart, sharply observed novel about gender and class on a contemporary Southern college campus in the spirit of The Female Persuasion and Prep.

Carter University: “The Harvard of the South.”

Annie Stoddard was the smartest girl in her small public high school in Georgia, but now that she’s at Carter, it feels like she’s got “Scholarship Student” written on her forehead.

Bea Powers put aside misgivings about attending college in the South as a biracial student to take part in Carter’s Justice Scholars program. But even within that rarefied circle of people trying to change the world, it seems everyone has a different idea of what justice is.

Stayja York goes to Carter every day, too, but she isn’t a student. She works at the Coffee Bean, doling out almond milk lattes to entitled co-eds, while trying to put out fires on the home front and save for her own education.

Their three lives intersect unexpectedly when Annie accuses fourth-year student Tyler Brand of sexual assault. Once Bea is assigned as Tyler’s student advocate, the girls find themselves on opposite sides as battle lines are drawn across the picture-perfect campus—and Stayja finds herself invested in the case’s outcome, too. 

Told through the viewpoints of Annie, Bea, and Stayja, Privilege is a bracingly clear-eyed look at today’s campus politics, and a riveting story of three young women making their way in a world not built for them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062989161

Mary Adkins

Mary Adkins is the author of When You Read This, Privilege, and Palm Beach. A native of the American South and a graduate of Duke University and Yale Law School, her writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Atlantic. She also teaches storytelling for The Moth. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Reviews for Privilege

[hccpsk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I received an ARC of this book from Edelweiss+ Carter College, the setting for Mary Adkins’ Privilege, represents all of the entitlement and socio-economic imbalance that exist on a small, liberal arts campuses. It also contains some of the best parts, like the female characters who narrate the book--Annie, Bea and Stayja--and their struggles and successes. All three young women are involved in some way with Tyler Brand, the typical, troubled yet handsome, poor-rich boy who manages to impact all of their lives. Privilege has some important things to say about consent, wealth, race and justice, but some parts ring more true than others. The story is definitely a page-turner, but Adkins may have tried to do a bit too much with many characters feeling flat and only there as tokens or plot points. Also, some interesting structural components (not surprising given Adkins' last book was epistolary) help boost this book into the worth reading category for YA fans.