Kissing In America by Margo Rabb

TL;DR girl finds a way to travel cross-country with her friend to see her crush again

(finished 8/3/15)

There's actually a lot more to the story than just that, but my policy with the TL;DR is to be as short as I can possibly get away with, so bear with me. Kissing in America also deals with interpersonal relationships, both romantic and not, as well as death, teenage angst, and exploring the balance between an idealistic version of life and what you actually end up with.

As a content warning, there is a death before the start of the story and a significant part of the plot focuses on grieving, so if that's something you want to avoid, Kissing in America probably isn't going to be your thing. I think it's done really well, but some of it was pretty heartbreaking. Kissing in America isn't quite a fluffy book.

It actually struck me pretty early on how Kissing in America felt actually realistic in terms of romance and narration. Honestly, for all I know, Eva could very well have been a real teenager and not a fictional character. Her narration was simple and concise and her crush on Will was so much different from the romances in all the other books I've read recently that I was overjoyed.

The plot itself isn't too realistic in terms of actually working out well in real life, but I think it worked well within the context of the book. The climax felt kind of short for me, but I really loved reading about Eva and Annie's cross-country adventure. Especially once they actually reached LA. I read Kissing in America close enough to our trip out west that reading about them visiting the Santa Monica pier (even for just a few pages) put me in a really good mood.

Kissing in America is a really good contemporary, but I wouldn't consider it fluffy at all. There are some pretty depressing moments, but none of them were "shock factor" or anything. They were very realistic things that Eva and the people she knows unfortunately had to experience. Things also don't quite work out as nicely as they do in standalone fluffy contemporary romance books, but I actually appreciated that.

TL;DR this is actually my favorite romance books out of the ones I've read in the recent past, so I definitely recommend it.