Sunday

The Kissing List

SO sorry for the delay in posting. This past week was filled with staying late at school, Curriculum Nights, and birthday celebrations. 

Stephanie Reents' The Kissing List, is a collection of interwoven stories about a group of friends and their relationships. Sounds straightforward, right? Not quite. This book sounds like it's going to be similar to Love Actually, with characters flitting into each other's stories. Instead, it tells separate stories about a group of friends from university and the intimate details of their personal lives as they grow up and grow apart. 

"During that year, I kissed a lot of people on the lips, unrelated to the usual factors such as gender, familiarity, or even sexual attraction." 

It's not all about kissing. It's about relationships. It's sometimes shocking; one character trades sex for a BCBG dress. Other times, it's bleak; one character gives up the man she loves to another woman in her own home. Still others, it's funny, emotional, and raw. 

Reents creates an extreme world in this novel. Every little thing in a relationship is magnified and then exaggerated. Reents is skilled in her craft. She evokes laughter and tears from her reader with her powerful prose. 

I liked this novel because it's about powerful women who take chances. They take chances in order to try to become something extraordinary. I didn't read it all at once, so at times I had to flip back and figure out how characters were linked together. Maybe I should have been paying more attention. 


♥ Meg xoxo

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