A Thousand Boy Kisses

Short review: This book could've been better if it wasnt young adult.

Long story: I really wanted to like this book the longer I read it. The more I read the book itself and about the author I realized that this is also a deeply personal story about grief, falsely packaged as a young adult romance novel. YA implies its marketed towards teens too, but the author retains a writing style that is very reminiscent of dark romance and erotica (which she is an author of too). Not saying teens cant read this, but this book models multiple tragedies, some on accident: A codependent relationship, characters that dont exist outside of their romance, heavy miscommunication and the death of a character. The characters never act their age either. While the plot of this book explains that later on, I found myself very irritated and pulled out of my immersion by how inaccurately child characters were written. And while Im talking about immersion - the writing style is very flat, simple and wattpad. The author actually says that tongues duel at some point. Wattpad writing in combination with supposedly deep talks about life and death (that repeat themselves over and over again) just clash, and exactly that is why this book shouldntve been YA in my opinion. This couldve been a great emotional venture into grief and dealing with it. Instead its one book of a girl dying and leaving behind a boyfriend amongst many.