Review: Kissing Kate

Kissing Kate by Lauren Myracle

publisher: Penguin Group

released: April 2007

hardcover, 198 pages

intended audience: Young Adult

rating:



Description from inside book flap:
When you've been best friends for four years, when you finish each others sentences, laugh at the same jokes, and share a secret cure for hiccups, what could ever come between you? A kiss.
Lissa and Kate had spent almost every day together since they were twelve. But then one night last summer, Kate leaned into kiss Lissa, and Lissa kissed her back. Now Kate is pretending that her friend doesn't exist, and it is Lissa who needs a secret cure for her feelings and confusion.
With the help of a book on lucid dreaming, a flaky new friend who claims to be an alien abductee, and her own keen sense of humor, Lissa discovers that there isn't a cure for life---that sometimes falling in love with the wrong person is the only way to find your footing.

Favorite quote from book: "I almost got sucked in. It would have been so easy. But feeling needed was one thing, having your own needs met was another."

Review: To say that this book was about a kiss between two best friends and Lissa's struggle with her feelings and confusion about it doesn't really do this story justice. It's about so much more than that! Sure, it's about a girl trying to figure out what these new feelings mean, but it's also about family and sisters being there for each other, it's about stepping out of your comfort zone, it's about friendships and knowing when to let them go, and mostly it's about facing yourself head on and not being afraid of what you find there or worrying about what the whole world will think of you.
I really liked the characters in this book, not only the main character Lissa, but her boss, her new friends, her little sister, and of course, Kate---all were very well written. And by the way, I didn't think her new friend, Ariel, was flaky at all...not exactly sure why they described her that way on the bookflap! She was eccentric and sweet, definitely danced to her own tune, and in the end, easily became one of my favorite characters in the book.