Title: Kissing In America
Author: Margo Rabb
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Length: 390
Rating: 3 Star
Publication: 26/05/2015
Description/Synopsis:
In the two years since her father died, sixteen-year-old Eva has found comfort in reading romance novels—118 of them, to be exact—to dull the pain of her loss that’s still so present. Her romantic fantasies become a reality when she meets Will, who seems to truly understand Eva’s grief. Unfortunately, after Eva falls head-over-heels for him, he picks up and moves to California without any warning. Not wanting to lose the only person who has been able to pull her out of sadness—and, perhaps, her shot at real love—Eva and her best friend, Annie, concoct a plan to travel to the west coast to see Will again. As they road trip across America, Eva and Annie confront the complex truth about love.
In this honest and emotional journey that National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr calls “gorgeous, funny, and joyous,” readers will experience the highs of infatuation and the lows of heartache as Eva contends with love in all of its forms.
Review – MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
I went into this book with pretty low expectations. I wasn’t even planning on reading it because I thought it would be silly but since the people at Penguin (THANK YOU!) were lovely enough to send me an advance copy I decided I might as well pick it up.
It was about as silly as I thought it would be though. At no point was I surprised by any of the actions or events that took place.
This book is about a girl called Eva who shares a kiss with a boy and now thinks they are both madly in love. Then the boy must move across the country. How will Eva survive without him when they were so madly in love? Well she will go visit him of course! But how will she do that? She has a mother that doesn’t public transport or the world in general and neither of them ever plan on getting on a plane again. I know! She will see some competition where said boy lives and then drags her best friend into it, making her join up so that Eva may get a kiss again. Will the boy still be there by the time they arrive? The answer: Nope.
I didn’t really like any characters of the characters. They were all just so one sided, had horrible personalities and have no development whats so ever. Eva is annoying and stupid and oozes teen angst the entire book. Its pretty much about Eva crying about loss, obsessing on the couple of kisses she had with this guy and how in love they are, and drama she creates herself. She is also just a terrible friend. Her mother is just a horrible mother, forever thinking about herself. She does one thing I liked in the book and it didn’t happen till the end. So I will give her one point of growth. Eva’s aunt Janet is just plain wrong. The only reason she is in this book is for shock value. Annie (best friend) and LuLu (stupid name) and Eva’s father are the only ones I liked two of which you don’t really focus on because Eva is too busy with herself and the other is dead.
I read in a review that this book is just filled with strong female characters. WHERE. Yes there are lots of female characters but they are in no way strong besides being strongly annoying.
I feel like this book was trying to be way more deep and meaningful than it actually turned out to be. At the moment the bookworld is filled with books about loss and love and the struggles of just being a teenager, and being written in a time when there are so many other and better ones this book fails to stand out in the crowd.
After all my b****ing and moaning I did enjoy some parts of this book I enjoyed or I would not have rated it 3 star. It did have some laugh out loud moments and some very cute moments here and there. These fluffy moments were enough to bump it up from a 2 star, but in no way good enough to carry it higher.
I would recommend this book to people who enjoy the self destructive drama of teenagers. Anyone else I would suggest giving this book a miss because there are much better ones of this nature out there and there is not enough time in our lives for all the books we must read.
Till Next Time…
