On the whole, this book was very underwhelming to me. I Kissed a Girl follows a up and coming makeup artist, who gets a job applying stage makeup to a B list actress, Lilah Silvers. They clash, they have misunderstandings, but ultimately they're both very drawn to each other. This sounds like the perfect recipe for a rom-com, but this book unfortunately just didn't hit the mark.

Starting with the good, I absolutely loved Lilah Silvers. She's a bisexual actress struggling to get out of her type-cast mold of B horror movies. She's a former beauty queen from the parent circuit, but she's so much more than that, something it takes her makeup artist Noa a while to understand. I felt super connected to her, she had a compelling story, and I loved her personality.

Unfortunately this book just couldn't sell the romance between Lilah and Noa to me. Noa makes snap judgements about her based on her past, she insults her for reading women fiction, and it takes a pretty long time for her to stop viewing her in a very objectified manner. We watch their romance blossom as they grow closer, but the chemistry just... isn't there? There was never a scene where I felt "oh, this is why they make sense. This is why they belong together."

I did enjoy the stalking sub-plot involving Lilah. I think it added more depth and excitement to the story than even the romance, which is supposed to be the main plot. I do think the stalking sub-plot became a little campy at the end, which I wouldn't have an issue with if the rest of the novel was also camp, but this discontinuity was cringe to read.

The story also really dragged. I confidently think the author could've cut out about 100 pages of this book and ended up with the exact same story. We're taken on set almost everyday with painstaking detail. Did I need to know what Lilah and Noa's day to day lives were like when so many scenes had no relevance to the story? Nope.

Overall, Lilah was definitely the saving grace to this book. I didn't enjoy much of the story, romance, or writing style. I think the plot idea was great, but the execution was really lacking. 2.5 stars, rounded up.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for providing an advanced copy for review.

I Kissed a Girl follows Noa, a makeup artist, and Lilah, the lead girl in a horror movie as they work together on set. This book’s main focus is on the romance between Lilah and Noa but very early on a mystery stalker subplot is introduced which I very much enjoyed. This book felt like it was much longer than was necessary so the combination of the mystery and the romance kept me interested throughout.

One aspect that continually bothered me throughout the book was that most of the issues were created by a lack of communication between Noa and Lilah as well as Noa’s judgemental attitude toward everything feminine. For me, this may have been okay initially but even the stalker subplot only advanced due to the fact that Lilah was told not to talk about it.

While the representation in this book was amazing I can only give it 3 stars because every other aspect was just okay.

I picked this expecting a frothy LGBTQ rom com off the description and the cover. Silly me, this was a fun and creative mashup of a romcom and thriller. The tension! OY VEY!

The yays: so much representation! We got a Jewish lesbian MC, a Jewish bi MC, a trans side character! We got heroines recuing each other! We got a puppy with no sense of personal safety and a taste for socks!

The nays: This is a post #MeToo world. If you have a stalker YOU SAY SOMETHING, so I didn't buy that she wouldn't for a hot damn second. It felt long, and I couldn't even tell you why. Also there was actually too much foreshadowing that it gave it away immediately. OF COURSE THAT'S A CAMERA. OF COURSE IT'S [redacted due to spoilers]. There were no other suspects for me, and I hate when I figure out a thriller too fast. Plus Noa was judgy and mean, and as a Jewish woman, it felt almost like a stereotype. I wanted to root for her but I couldn't Lilah was the much better developed character. And man- did I wish we had more Chrissy. Chrissy needs a solo novel.

Overall it was okay, but it felt similar to those free Kindle Unlimited thrillers- so I would recommend it for fans of those types of books.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I’m torn on how to truly rate this book. There was so much potential and I don’t think it entirely lived up to it. We’re there moments I adored? Yes, but they were mostly in the first half. I think the author did a good job on the first half of this. They established the relationship and built up the individual lead characters. However, I think they didn’t keep that momentum going in the second half. I wish they had either played up the stalking plot a little bit more or gotten rid of it altogether.

I absolutely love any jewish sapphic representation that I can get, but this book fell a little short of my expectations.

Lilah is an amazing character. She has so much depth and substance and I fell in love with her within the first couple chapters. Noa on the other hand was judgy and mean for a lot of the book, and constantly made fun of traditionally feminine things. She hates the color pink, made fun of pageants nonstop, and gagged at Lilah when she said her favorite genre was romance books. I wanted to love their relationship but Noa was just so ‘i’m not like other girls’ that I was getting annoyed.

The side characters were for the most part fabulous. Noa’s roommate Chrissy is a trans woman in a six person polycule and she’s possibly the funniest person in the book. I would die for a book abt Chrissy and her various lovers to be honest. Lilah’s Zaydee (Grandfather) is so precious, he deserves the world. Their relationship is so cute and I wish we could’ve gotten more of it.

There was a scary stalker subplot that never really got fully fleshed out but then ended up being a massive part of the final chapters which was confusing. I think the book would’ve been better off without it, it honestly felt like something thrown in at the last second in an attempt for shock factor.

Overall I enjoyed it, it was cute and a one day read. I wish Noa had been just a little less anti femininity but that’s just personal preference.

Such a fun romance between two young Jewish women in the film industry. Now and Lilah are both messy and awkward and impossible not to root for. The subplot with the stalker was not my favorite. Honestly I wished they’d found another way to propel the story to its climax but ultimately I enjoyed the book.

For people fan of horror movies, Lilah Silver is quickly becoming a household name, and Noa Birnbaum is totally in love with her. Lilah dreams of climbing out from her b-list stardom and to prove herself to anyone who ever doubted her. Noa is a makeup artist with dreams of working with special effects - so when the opportunity presents itself, she drops out of college to pursue her dream to work with SFX on a movie.
Lilah Silver playing the final girl in said movie and Noa being her primary artist is just the cherry on top.

I don’t really have any strong opinions about this book, it was simply fine. While the stalker sub-plot kept me engaged, the rest of the story couldn’t keep my attention for long. While I appreciated the communication between Lilah and Noa at the start, I almost wished for some kind of miscommunication towards the end. Everything was solved so easily in this book, and everything seemed to come easy to the characters, so for a 400-page long book, not much happened.

For me, characters are more important than the plot and unfortunately I didn’t really connect nor care about either. While I was quite fond of Lilah and could relate to her in the beginning, I don’t feel like her character was developed enough for me to care in the end. Noa was not my favorite, and even though half of the book was written from her POV, I still don’t feel like I know her at all. In the end I didn’t really care if they ended up together.

This book was funny though, I’ll give it that. There were times I screamed and laughed out loud, this book was chaotic in the best way.

There are two things I absolutely love about this book: its dedication to horror movies, and the way it turns a romance moment of reconciliation into some kind of meta movie moment. Snakes run amok, a set is trashed in a spectacular disaster, and there are mutual heroines-rescue-each-other scenes which are really adorable. Before this, a villain is outed (his villainy is very nicely foreshadowed) and our brave heroines must outsmart him. This was so fun and so creative, and I just loved it. I am a total wimp who hates to be scared so I am never going to watch a horror movie ever, but what I really love to read about is when one passion is folded into another passion. So the way that this romance is also structured a bit like a suspense thriller with its stalker sub-plot, and the way its final scene resembles a disaster movie, really worked for me. It was totally in keeping with the theme and tone of everything else in the character's worlds.

I know other reviewers have complained that the stalker sub-plot takes away from the romance. I don't think this is the case at all - as storytelling, it works well, at least it did for me. There is real dramatic tension in the fact every single guy on set (except the lead actor) is hinted to possibly be the stalker, with leering glances, "don't upset the others with the news you're being stalked" concealment, and nervous behaviour as if they're getting away with something. In a post MeToo era, this feels, well, basically like reality for an attractive female actor on a non-blockbuster movie set. There's also a huge amount of space for a romance novel devoted to making practical horror effects, and the somewhat monotonous business of setting up shots involving said effects. This does work against romance reader expectations, but I was completely intrigued. The book has such great energy when it's telling us snippets of conversation overheard in the props department, the ridiculous gripes of the science lead about the proper scale for Pterodactyls, or gleefully describing the buckets of fake blood that drench the watching crew.

What I think is actually the problem is that the romance beats are very muddled on on their own. They get drowned beneath the more memorable subplots and setting. The characters, while pitched as total opposites, one of them a pink-wearing former pageant girl, the other a black-clad horror movie enthusiast, a never quite find their distinct voices. When they're cracking a joke, they sound just about the same, and some of the reciprocal dialogue struggles with awkwardness that doesn't seem entirely self-aware. I know these are mutually awkward people, they are intended to be awkward. But, "Because both you and caramel can be so sweet, deliciously well rounded, but disappointing when oversalty" is a line that, if a human being uttered it, ought to be received with groans of pain. I love humor that doesn't land, and often its not-landing becomes funny, but this is not that. And there's just not much content to Noa and Lilah's romance. They go on literally half a date (a friend's outing that turns into a date) and kiss once, then apparently a bunch of stuff happens off-page on the movie set that the reader misses, and they're in love. There's several references to coupley thing they've done together that I honestly don't remember happening on-page at all. For example, apparently Noa helped Lilah memorize lines for a movie audition in Paris, but I don't recall that being a thing that was even mentioned.

I just didn't get a sense of two opposites slowly warming to each other thanks to forced proximity in a work environment. Initially, Noa is prejudiced against Lilah as a former pageant queen, thinking that she's fake with crap taste in books (she's caught reading an f/f romance novel by Noa, which Noa makes fun of). And Lilah IS sometimes fake, piling on the charm to please people by concocting a persona she thinks they'll like more than her actual self. This is a great idea for two character arcs. However, the relationship escalation notes don't entirely make sense as a coherent set of facts that would lead a person to behave in a certain way? For example, we're told that Lilah idolizes Noa and thinks she has it all together. But on the page, Noa's been snobby about Lilah's taste, to which she's reacted negatively, so she already knows Noa can be mean - that's not perfect. Lilah has much more experience in movies than Noa does, considering this is Noa's first gig and Lliah's reached the status of a leading lady, so in that regard, Liliah has it more together by any objective measure. Lilah is envious of Noa's assurance in her queerness and her belonging in the queer community, but that's one aspect of her life - there's no reason Lilah would believe she "has it all together" across the board, as she tells Noa.

Quite often, the subtext becomes the text, with the characters making speeches about the realizations they've had and how they better understand themselves now. Such realizations are important, and these give us some clarity about where the character arcs are going. But I wished that there were fewer outright reiterations of the fact that Noa is a snob and Lilah is fake, that Noa is too quick to judge and that Lilah struggles with being herself instead of a movie star everyone loves. This could be more subtly signaled through the content of their dialogues, so the reader can conclude this on their own without being guided like a horse on a lead. And the same applies to the romantic scenes. Most often, the scenes where they're together are a lot of "they wanted each other" without building much real emotional closeness to show how their intimacy is developed beyond feelings of lust.

Steam level: closed-door, one fade to black, a few on-page kisses.
CW: stalking, scenes of danger involving snakes.

I was very excited to read this but was slightly disappointed. The story fell short for me with someone of the characters. Throughout the book we didn't get to see Noa's growth which was frustrating. The rep in the book was amazing : Jewish bisexual main character, Jewish lesbian main character, gay side characters and more. It was so refreshing having good Jewish rep. The writing style was a little off-putting but I still finished the book.

Book Review for I Kissed a Girl
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2 ⭐⭐
Man I have been in a lull here lately. Several books have not been a good match for me mainly because of the writing. This was the case with this novel. While the story was interesting, I could not get passed the writing style. As I was reading it just seemed very simple, too simple for me. I could not hold my interest.
Thank you to Netgalley for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Make-up artist Noa Birnbaum quits college when she lands a job working on a studio film called Scareodactyl. It will give her professional days counting towards her future career and joining the union. It also stars her fan girl crush Lilah Silver. Noa is tongue tied around her Lilah and doesn't make the best first impression. Lilah is interested in Noa but thinks she has a girlfriend. All things get figured out while they work on the movie.

I liked the basic story and especially when the main characters were interacting. But a whole lot of the book focuses on the filming and special effects process and a stalking situation. It bogs down the romance. There was a period when the couple can't be open and it makes no sense that Noa wouldn't be texting or calling to explain the situation better. Also after the predictable stalking storyline happens it isn't clear if the person caused all the mishaps during filming or not. The book is longer than it needs to be as well.

An okay read but from the cute cover and blurb I was hoping for more. The book contains mild language and is clean for intimate scenes. Recommend for YA and up. Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for an ARC ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This book felt a bit too long for what I was given while reading it. I went in quite excited because I always feel like romcom books-in particular WLW stories- suffer from a lack of times spent with the characters. But this felt like we had the time but somehow I still didn't buy either of the characters being in love with each other.

Funny at some parts and harshly reltatable at others, it was a good read but was missing the inherent connection needed between the two main characters.