Kiss the Girl

I've been a fan of Melissa Brayden's more recent work, but am just getting around to reading some of her earlier works. Kiss the Girl is one of my new favorites. It goes beyond the cookie-cutter formula that a lot of lesfic novels follow. This story includes so many different parts that blend together so well.

Brooklyn has grown up never knowing the family that gave her away at birth and has never experienced the love of parents, having been passed through the system until she reached adulthood. Her heart is hardened to love until she meets Jessica, who happens to be the head of a competing advertising company. The two companies are competing against each other for a large contract. Throw in that Brooklyn's birth mother makes contact and Brookyn's world is turned upside down. Having learned to shut others out, she is not good with relationships. All of this mixes together to make a fascinating read.

I loved that there were times that the story went in a different direction that I expected. After having read hundreds of lesfic novels, it feels like it is easy to predict what will happen (not that it makes reading those less fun). But this book was a nice change of pace from that. For example, when it is found out Jessica was not responsible for the pitch proposal being stolen, the formula would be for everything to be good between Jessica and Brooklyn. But instead, Brooklyn ends the relationship because she can't deal with the possibility of something else bad happening in the future.

This is going on my Favorites shelf to come back to in the future. It is smart, witty, and has lots of twists that I enjoy in a story. You can never go wrong with a Melissa Brayden book and this one is at the top of the list.

Story: 8 / 10
Characters: 7
Setting: 7.5
Prose: 5