17 First Kisses by Rachael Allen Published by Harper Collins
Published: June 17th 2014
Buy on Amazon
Add to Goodreads
No matter how many boys Claire kisses, she can’t seem to find a decent boyfriend. Someone who wouldn’t rather date her gorgeous best friend, Megan. Someone who won’t freak out when he learns about the tragedy her family still hasn’t recovered from. Someone whose kisses can carry her away from her backwoods town for one fleeting moment.
Until Claire meets Luke.
But Megan is falling for Luke, too, and if there’s one thing Claire knows for sure, it’s that Megan’s pretty much irresistible.
With true love and best friendship on the line, Claire suddenly has everything to lose. And what she learns—about her crush, her friends, and most of all herself—makes the choices even harder.
In her moving debut, Rachael Allen brilliantly captures the complexities of friendship, the struggles of self-discovery, and the difficulties of trying to find love in high school. Fans of Sarah Ockler, Susane Colasanti, and Stephanie Perkins will fall head over heels for this addictive, heartfelt, and often hilarious modern love story.
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I guess for me 17 First Kisses was a slight disappointment. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t love it. What started out as a fun story with a good friendship and interesting back story and a creative way to tell the story of the first kisses, quickly became kind of muddled and in the end turned out to be just okay. Instead of being blown away when I was done I was just left thinking what my next book was going to be.
17 First Kisses is about Clair, a high school senior, that is a tomboy at heart but also a little boy crazy. She’s got her best friend Meghan and her other two close girl friends, but she is still looking for the boy of her dreams. But with family problems and the same group of boys always around Clair has basically given up. That’s until Luke shows up. As Clair gets to know Luke a crush begins but with this crush is a problem, Meghan likes him too. And for as long as Clair and Meghan have been friends Meghan always gets what she wants.
The book really started off great. I liked how the story was being told. I liked the first kiss stories and how one kiss lead to Meghan and Clair’s friendship. I liked getting background information that way. It made it seem new and different as it wasn’t a flashback, but a natural part of the story. But I guess my problem was Meghan and Clair. It was hard to understand why they were friends when they seemed more like frienemies. I mean for me this could be because I never understood the concept of the frienemy. The Serena and Blair’s of the world never really made sense to me. But I found the competition between the two of them to be kind of cumbersome and a tad too much. There were moments when I liked their friendship and it seemed genuine, but I think what made this book just okay was that there weren’t enough of those moments to fill a whole book and that bugged me. I did really like the friendship that Clair had with Sam. That was a true friendship and I wish there was more focus on that. And I also really liked the stuff happening with Clair’s family. I almost feel like that would have been a better focus than the friendship as it had a deeper feeling to it.
All in all 17 First Kisses was a quick read that kept me interested enough but I felt just missed the mark. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t amazing either. It had some great parts and some not so great parts that made me roll my eyes. The characters are interesting enough to keep you engaged so I wouldn’t shy away from telling you to pick it up and give it a go yourself.
Oh, that’s kind of a bummer! I was looking forward to this one but I’ve also heard a lot of really mixed reviews.. Mostly between three and four stars. I still have it from EW so I’ll be reading it at some point in time! Maybe saving it for a time when I need a quick read!