HOLIDAY HAPPINESS: Book Review: Kissing In America by Margo Rabb

Title: Kissing In America

Author: Margo Rabb

Publisher: Harper

Release Date: May 26, 2015

Format Read: ARC

Description on Goodreads: In the two years since her father died, sixteen-year-old Eva has found comfort in reading romance novels-- 118 of them, to be exact-- to dull the pain of her loss that's still so present. Her romantic fantasies become a reality when she meets Will, who seems to truly understand Eva's grief. Unfortunately, after Eva falls head-over-heels for him, he picks up and moves to California without any warning. Not wanting to lose the only person who has been able to pull her out of sadness-- and, perhaps, her shot at real love-- Eva and her best friend, Annie, concoct a plan to travel to the west coast to see Will again. As they road trip across America, Eva and Annie confront the complex truth about love.

In this honest and emotional journey that National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr calls "Gorgeous, funny, and joyous," readers will experience the highs of infatuation and the lows o heartache as Eva contends with love in all of its forms.

I had the opportunity to read KISSING IN AMERICA as an ARC, and though I was rather interested in it, I didn't fall in love with the story.

Eva is struggling with the accidental death of her dad, and she uses romance novels to fill the void until she meets Will-- a boy from school who she falls fastly and intensely in love with. And then he moves, and Eva becomes obsessed with the idea of following him, convinced that their relationship is strong enough to last from New York to California. In order to do so, she and her best friend become contestants on a teen tv show that is to be filmed in the same city that Will lives in, and head out west.

And I feel like that is such a far-fetched story. 

I realize that this is a book of fiction, but with contemporary I think there's a line, and once you cross it you've gone into iffy territory. To me, that was what happened in KISSING IN AMERICA. What are the odds that Eva would find a tv show that needed two girls, one of which had to be super smart like Annie, that was going to be filmed in the exact same city as where the boy moved? And the fact that they had family to stay with every few hundred miles? It just didn't sit well with me, and KISSING was a bit of a flop in my personal opinion.

I give KISSING IN AMERICA one star. I didn't find anything about it that I could love, and the main character was a bit too naive for my taste.

(Un)Happily,

Stephanie