Reviews tagging 'Cursing'

I Kissed a Girl by Jennet Alexander

1 review

notabookseller's review

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emotional funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
 
Thank you to NetGalley and SourceBooks Casablanca for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. I Kissed a Girl is scheduled for release on August 3rd, 2021. 
 
I Kissed a Girl is about Noa Birnbaum, a make-up and special effects artist who got her first full-time gig on a movie starring Lilah Silver, an actress trying to expand her filmography past the slew of B-List campy horror films currently filling up her IMDb page. 
 
This New Adult novel has it all: gore, snakes (I think this also gets a TW), queer representation, (TW) stalking, mystery; if only they’d add a love story (that was a joke). 
 
This story follows Noa into her new job as she navigates trying not to fall for her coworker and primary make-up subject while also trying to prove to her parents that her passion was worth dropping out of university for. Lilah spends her pages coming out as bisexual, figuring out her place in the community, her place as an actress, and trying to ditch the pageant mom running commentary through her mind. After an entire first day of foot-in-mouth comments, Noa and Lilah become friends and quickly realize that they have feelings for each other. The two are then on the road to a relationship when some internet gossip drops about Lilah and she thinks that Noa sold her out which opens up a whole can of worms, so to speak. 
 
The writing in this book is funny and relatable and really lets you feel what they’re feeling. There’s a variety of representation from sexuality to gender to non-monogamous relationships, even though the story doesn’t deep dive into all of them. The aspect of (TW) Lilah’s stalker was also well incorporated; it didn’t take over the story but the knowledge that they existed created a back-burner sense of awareness the entire time I was reading, and when it was the focal point it was super creepy, appropriately. 
 
I love a good NA novel and I’m glad that more and more authors are writing them; I Kissed a Girl is a lovely addition to the genre. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a wlw romance, anyone looking to diversify their reading, and people who enjoy a good bad campy horror movie (with dinosaurs!). 
 
This is a new adult novel (obvi) so it does mention sex a few times but it’s not graphic or detailed so I feel comfortable saying that it could be appropriate for young adult readers as well (but who am I to talk, I read Twilight in the fifth grade). 
 
Oh, I almost forgot, as someone who graduated college with a film degree, I think that this was a solid depiction of a film set. Then again, I haven’t been on a whole bunch of sets and halfway through I realized I wasn’t as dedicated to that major as I thought I was. That’s not relevant to the book, but that’s okay. Y’all should read I Kissed a Girl when it hits shelves the first week of August. 
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