IF WE KISS
Rachel Vail
HarperCollins
Fiction
ISBN: 006056914X
272 pages

• Read an Excerpt
• Author Talk -- May 2005

Who doesn't dream about their first kiss? It will be romantic. It will be dreamy. It will be all that a girl ever wanted. Ninth-grader Charlotte (Charlie to her friends) has been thinking about her first kiss for years. But then one day, Charlie is taken out of her dream world when Kevin Lazarus grabs her hand and pulls her outside of the school.

"Kevin led me quickly around the side of the building, then stopped. I managed not to crash into him. I tried to look calm, cool, unperturbed. I told myself not to laugh, especially not a snorting kind of laugh. "Wha--what did--"

And then he kissed me.

There I was, pressed up against the brick wall, kissing Kevin. A decorative sticking-out brick was digging into my backbone, but I didn't want to wreck my first kiss by readjusting. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to concentrate."

Charlie is taken aback by her kissing encounter, and then getting caught by the principal. (The decorative brick was right outside his window!) Instead of gossiping with her best friend Tess about Kevin, Charlie keeps it to herself, a decision that ends up coming back to haunt her. At a party soon after the Charlie-Kevin kiss, Kevin kisses Tess! And before she knows it, Tess and Kevin are dating and Charlie is caught up in a web of lies.

Despite everything, Charlie still finds herself thinking about Kevin. Why did he kiss her? Did he still like her? He's now off-limits because Tess is dating him. To make him even more off-limits, Charlie finds out that her own divorced mother is dating Kevin's father!

What is a girl to do when she's fallen for the one guy who she should stay away from?

Author Rachel Vail has written THE FRIENDSHIP RING, as well as WONDER, EVER AFTER, DO-OVER, and DARING TO BE ABIGAIL. IF WE KISS is a fun, humorous book about the woes of falling for the not-so-perfect boy. The main character Charlie is down-to-earth and endearing. She's reminiscent of a young Bridget Jones. She winds up in humorous situations and works hard to get out of them. It's also refreshing to read a YA book about a 9th grader who's dealing with situations that are somewhere in between a middle grade reader and a more serious YA novel.

   --- Reviewed by Kristi Olson (zooey24@yahoo.com)

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