Book Review #107: With This Kiss by Carrie Hope Fletcher

I'm a huge fan of Carrie Hope Fletcher as an actress/singer/YouTuber, and I have read all of her YA/Adult books so far. Some of her books I've really liked and some I haven't, mainly the last two, so I was a bit wary about this one. But ultimately, I felt like the idea of this book was one that I'd probably enjoy.

Lorelai has a secret - whenever she kisses someone on the lips, she sees how they will die. To solve this problem, Lorelai has decided never to kiss anyone again. But then she meets Grayson, the first man she has wanted to kiss in years. Can she kiss Grayson? And if she does, can she change what she sees?

While I enjoyed reading this story, there is a lot more that I disliked about the book than liked. Having said that, it's still one of my favourites of Carrie's.

From the first page of the book, the sentence structures are weird. Some sentences run on too long without commas, and others stop short. It reads like it probably needed one more once-over by an editor or proofreader.

Some of the characters feel like caricatures, rather than real, fleshed-out people. In a way, it felt like they represented ideas and points of view, rather than actual people.

One of the things that I usually don't like about Carrie's books is the use of instalove, and this happens again in this story. The characters fall in almost-love as soon as they speak to each other. I feel like a slow build-up, especially for a story like this, would have been a better read.

Lorelai isn't a character that I loved. She repeats similar dialogue in almost every chapter and it can become irritating and frustrating to read. We understand that she doesn't want to kiss Grayson, this only needs to be said once.

The story itself also becomes quite repetitive, and I think this is because there isn't much of a plot. Other than Lorelai having these abilities and falling from Grayson, there isn't much more that happens.

None of the characters are particularly 3-dimensional - they all feel like words on a page.

In addition, nothing about this story seems significant, including Grayson as a love interest. He is built up to be the love of Lorelai's life, but it never feels like he is. Nothing about this story feels like it will matter when the book is finished.

Having said all that, I really did like the premise of this story. So much could have been done with it, and it would have been interesting to see maybe a longer story with better-written characters using the same plot.

The story itself was somewhat enjoyable, and definitely an easy read, which made me want to keep picking it up. It certainly wasn't boring.

Overall, if you like the idea of this book it may be worth picking up, but there were a few better roads that the story could have gone down.

2/5