Kissing Kate [Paperback]

Lauren Myracle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 19, 2007

Kate was lissa?s best friend. they?ve shared everything for four years. then one night at a drunken party, Kate leaned in to kiss lissa, and lissa kissed her back. And now Kate is pretending lissa doesn?t exist. Confused and alone, lissa?s left questioning everything she thought she knew about herself, and about life. but with the help of a free-spirit new friend, lissa?s beginning to find the strength to realize that sometimes falling in love with the wrong person is the only way to find your footing.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up-The kisser is best-friend-since-seventh-grade Lissa. The kiss is no peck on the cheek, and therein lies the rub. Since the fateful event, Kate has been cold to her friend. In this first-person narrative, Lissa, hurt and confused, details her present state of inner turmoil, with frequent flashbacks to the girls' blissful (pre-kiss) days. To complicate matters, Lissa and her younger sister are being raised by an uncle (their parents died in a plane crash), and lack the emotional rudder a maternal figure might have provided. At first Lissa misses Kate dearly, but gradually, through personal insights derived from some new and unexpected friendships (and forays into new-age dream therapy), she finds the strength to confront both Kate and her own sexual identity. While the message is sound, the delivery is seriously flawed. The friendship between Lissa and Kate, the linchpin of the story, is unconvincing. The girls are defined from the get-go by their differences in appearance and personality, but Myracle fails to make the case that opposites truly attract. It seems ungenerous that Lissa and Kate are painted as such stark contrasts, with Lissa being the brave one and Kate in denial of her sexuality; they are, after all, only 16, an age when sexual conflict is the norm.
Mary Ann Carcich, Mattituck-Laurel Public Library, Mattituck, NY
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Gr. 7-10. "It was one thing for someone else to be gay. It was something else entirely if it was me." Lissa, 16, has been best friends with beautiful Kate for four years, but everything changes when Kate gets drunk at a party, and she and Lissa passionately kiss. Lissa is desperate to talk about it, but Kate wants to pretend that nothing happened. This first novel does a great job of showing the girls' surprise at the situation and the way their emotions swing from attraction to denial. Funny and anguished, Lissa's first-person narrative expresses her hurt, anger, and confusion as she tries to date a guy; searches for an adult to talk to (and for a bra that fits); and downloads depressing statistics from the Net about the high suicide rate among gay teens. There's some contrivance about "lucid dreaming," with heavy metaphors and connections, but most readers will skim that for the lively realistic story about friends and lovers. For another, very different take on the subject, see David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy, reviewed on p.1980. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Speak (April 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142408697
• ISBN-13: 978-0142408698
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #98,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lauren Myracle is the author of many popular books for teens and tweens, including New York Times bestsellers ttyl and ttfn (Abrams). She lives with her family in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pleasant Surprise, June 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Kissing Kate (Hardcover)

As an over sixty father of six grown children, I had to be cajoled by my youngest daughter to read Ms Myracle's first novel. For starters the book was not written for my age group, and it was not a subject matter that seemed relevant to me now. But the story-telling was so engaging, the revelation of a young girl's search for self so clear and convincing, and the treatment of the theme so even-handed, I loved the book. Any parent (or grandparent) of adolescents should consider "Kissing Kate" required reading.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars unconvinced, August 2, 2004

By 

lark (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kissing Kate (Hardcover)

While I adore YA novels about queer kids, this one left me a little underwhelmed. I was just never convinced that Lissa and Kate were real people --- the character development was nil. I also didn't believe that they actually felt something for one another --- it was kind of like a romantic comedy with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, where all of the ingredients for a romantic comedy are there, but there's just no chemistry; it's not convincing. For a really good read, rely on the old classic Annie On My Mind --- a book which I still practically keep under my pillow, and which convinced my mom (!) that maybe, maybe this lesbian thing was OK.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Growing up is hard to do., April 22, 2003

By 

Zilla M. Spencer "Southron Boy" (Vardaman, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kissing Kate (Hardcover)

As a retired educator and an avid reader I was most impressed with this book. Lauren Myracle has written an engrossing story about the sexual feelings of a teenage girl, Lissa, and how she and the important others in her life react to them. Complicating things is the fact that she has these feelings towards her best friend Kate who after arousing desires in Lissa with a kiss now ignores her. Lissa's parents were killed in a car wreck when she and her younger sister were very young and they live with their Uncle Jerry. Entering the picture is Ariel, an interesting and ultimately critically important character in helping Lissa come to terms with her dilemma.
Myracle develops her story in a way that will appeal to teenagers with similar feelings but more that that she tells it in an engrossing manner that keeps the reader interested from beginning to end. This book is an important one for teenagers, parents, counselors, therapists, and anyone who wants to understand and help teenagers, even adults, with similar conflicting feelings.