125Pages

26 Kisses by Anna Michels
Published by Simon Pulse on May 24, 2016

26 Kisses by Anna Michels sounded like such a fun read. A heartsick girl who wants to make a change and decides to spend the summer before her senior year kissing her way through the alphabet. Unfortunately, the way Veda went about her task left a trail of hurt feelings and upset people in her wake. What could have been a sweet coming of age tale was instead the story of Veda hurting friends and family on her quest.

The plot of 26 Kisses had promise and some great moments. However, the path the main character took to get what she wanted left a lot to be desired. The writing of Anna Michels was good. She was able to make me understand the feelings of Veda and how she felt during the summer. Emotions are hard to express in writing and she did it well. The pacing had some issues. At times weeks would pass then only a day, it wasn’t consistent in the telling. The world created was very well done. Nice and detailed I had a great visual of the locations and where the action was happening. There were a lot of emotions in the book, but not all of them good. Veda had a way of only seeing what she wanted and not caring about the people around her and that led to some seriously negative feelings. The characters were okay, not awful but not great. Veda was weak and followed the lead of her best friend, Mel, almost without question. The sweet boy Killian was my favorite character and he was so good that he tempered a lot of my negative feelings.

26 Kisses had a lot of potential. Decent plot line, dreamy guy, cute goal for the main character. Unfortunately, it did not deliver. I particularly disliked the fact that Veda was called a slut after kissing like three guys. That type of shaming should not have been included as it turned the story into something distasteful. Also the way Veda went about some of the kisses is “cute” for a girl to do, but would be sexual assault if a boy did it. Anna Michels had some great moments and I wish they would have carried throughout the book. This was a read with some great promise that just wasn’t able to meld all of the pieces together.

I received this book for free from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.