Friday 17 May 2013

The Kissing Booth by Beth Reekles

Meet Rochelle Evans: pretty, popular--and never been kissed. Meet Noah Flynn: badass, volatile--and a total player. And also Elle's best friend's older brother... 

When Elle decides to run a kissing booth for the school's Spring Carnival, she locks lips with Noah and her life is turned upside down. Her head says to keep away, but her heart wants to draw closer--this romance seems far from fairy tale and headed for heartbreak. 

But will Elle get her happily ever after?


The Kissing Booth is a normal, fun teen read - nothing particularly special but still kinda sweet. It tells of Elle and her best friend-since-birth Lee having to come up with an idea of a booth for the Spring Carnival and finally decide on a kissing booth. Elle doesn't want to actually do it because she hasn't been kissed before. You can see where this is going, can't you? She kisses Noah, Lee's brother, who obviously had a thing for her before this, though Elle was blind to it, and then they can't keep their hands off each other. 

I'm just going to say: I liked this, but I had a few issues with it. First, Elle was pretty much typically normal, she was pretty without realising it, one of the guys, but didn't know how to be a teenage girl: she couldn't flirt, tell when guys were being a bit too predatory, anything like that. She was nice enough, but so naive sometimes I wanted to shake her! Then there was Noah. He was surprisingly cool, and boy was he hot in his Superman underwear! But he was also a violence junkie and seemed to get off on protecting Elle from any living male, which made her all the more naive to the ways of the world! At least she realised that and told him off for it. Go Elle. And then there was the progression of their relationship. Elle kept saying she was a romantic, but she lost her virginity to Noah after a couple of months of secret making out. Plus, again, way naive when she couldn't tell that a drunk guy was going to grope her. Honestly, get rid of the rose-tinted glasses!

Her relationship with Lee was also a little bare. Don't get me wrong, he was great and I actually liked that it wasn't going to be one of those 'oh, I like you more than a friend' stories, because those are too common, but he was incredibly dramatic when he found out about Elle and his brother, which is understandable on one level but on the other, I couldn't help thinking 'God, get over it, they clearly love each other'. 

All in all, a cute teen read that had so much potential. It was funny and sometimes adorable but lacked any real development. 

Published 13th December 2012 by Random House. Thank you to netgalley for my e-copy.

1 comment:

  1. This sounds like a really cute read but I think Elle would annoy me too much for me to read it myself!

    Cait x

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