Kissing in America
Ratings5
Average rating3.8
Acclaimed writer Margo Rabb’s Kissing in America is “a wonderful novel about friendship, love, travel, life, hope, poetry, intelligence, and the inner lives of girls,” raves internationally bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love). 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 can relate to Eva’s grief. Unfortunately, after Eva falls head-over-heels for him, he picks up and moves to California with barely any warning. Not wanting to lose the only person who has been able to pull her out of sadness—and, perhaps, her first shot at real love—Eva and her best friend, Annie, concoct a plan to travel to the west coast. 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 of heartache as Eva contends with love in all of its forms. Since publication, this novel received 4 starred reviews and has been named: A Chicago Public Library Best Teen Book of 2015 A New York Public Library Best Book for Teens 2015 A Miami Herald Best Book of the Year A Spirit of Texas selection A TAYSHAS High School Reading List Selection An Oprah Summer Reading List selection A Junior Library Guild selection An Amazon Best Book of the Month A Publisher’s Lunch 2015 Buzz Book for Young Adults
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
Like Eva, the heroine of this book, I started reading romance novels at age 14, and at age 16 I had a brief relationship with a boy I met at our school's Model UN who lived 250 miles away. I thought we had found true love and that he could save me from my loneliness. He thought we had had a fun few days and that it was silly at our age to try to start something long-distance.
All of that background is to say that I could totally and painfully identify with Eva and the hopes she pinned on her relationship with Will, although the hole she was trying to fill was much deeper than mine. I thought the issues Eva encountered and the lessons she learned on her road trip to see Will again were realistic and interesting. And the final scenes set in California were hilarious, heartbreaking and hopeful.
Rabb's teenage characters are genuine and believable, which is what makes her portrayal of romance novels so bafflingly annoying. Has she ever actually read one? The fake examples she uses are completely absurd, full of purple prose that any decent romance novelist would eschew. She could have made her point about Eva escaping into romance novels without tearing down the entire genre.
The book loses half a star for dissing the romance novels I still love to read (although I have a much more realistic view of them almost 40 years later), but it regains it for the strong friendship between Eva and her best friend Annie, and the complex but loving relationship between Eva and her mother.
Ms. Rabb, let me know if you want a recommendation for some actual romance novels that have nary a “man-root” mention in them.
