Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Very interesting take on social media. Leila is a dowdy, shut-in teenager traumatised by the death of her mother. She is drawn in by a sinister and manipulative man to cover for the suicide of the brilliant, mercurial Tess. Leila will pretend to be Tess online. Tess is exhausted by her bipolar disorder. Through this plan she wants to stop her friends and family being hurt by her decision to die. But Leila’s peculiar Aspergersian blindness soon sees the plan spiral out of control as she wakes up to the possibilities of becoming Tess, even if only virtually. This is despite the fact that Leila is unable to properly process the relationships and subtleties of the worldly Tess.
It’s a car crash waiting to happen, of course, but there are some wonderful observations and set pieces. Leila is a really nice example of a narrator who is not unreliable, per se. The audience is so much better placed to see what’s going on than Leila could ever be. Nevertheless, from the security of her tiny bedroom Leila ends up on a whistle stop tour of what it’s like to be an adult that will change her forever.
Definitely worth a go.
