My Last Kiss

by Bethany Neal

[Leah]

When I decided to take part in Book Sparks Summer Reading Challenge, it was such a good decision even if I do say so myself! There’s lots of wonderful books being read over the summer, many in genres I only read sporadically and next up was one of the July picks, My Last Kiss. I’ve been staring at the cover ever since I dowloaded it from Netgalley (it’s such a pretty, clever cover). I was very excited to read it, and it wasn’t really the novel I expected; I should have read the synopsis beforehand, I loved the idea of a thriller novel, but I didn’t know it was also a ghost story!

My Last Kiss’s blurb tells me that it’s a thriller, a who-dun-it and although it IS a who-dun-it, it wasn’t very thrilling at all. It was too slow-paced to be a true thriller, and the novel just seems to bump along at its own pace and I just wanted more from the novel. I’m literally sitting writing my review and I can’t remember the lead characters name and that’s just awful for me to admit. I’ve just had to look it up; her name is Cassidy! My problem with the whole thriller aspect is that fingers are pointed at every one – it was almost like a process of elimination and everyone seemed, at one point, to be the last person to see Cassi alive. It got to the point where so many suspicions were flying – false accusations, yelling and screaming, and I don’t know how a group of friends come back from so much recriminations. Everyone had a secret, and the shocks just came but they weren’t shocking enough.

The trouble is the novel jumps around a lot in the beginning – instead of opening with Cassi’s fall from the bridge, instead it opens cold as she realises she’s a ghost and from there she ghostports place to place and my head was spinning because I didn’t know where anywhere was. Also Cassi was hardly sweet and innocent, she cultivates that persona but all of her actions are so sneaky and while she tries to explain it away, what she does to Ethan is unexplainable. She mentions a lot that she and Ethan “aren’t what they were” but we were never SHOWN their relationship at all, except their first kiss and the whole Ethan-can-see-Cassi-as-a-ghost thing. I’d have liked the novel more if it had made more sense – if we got to see Cassi and Ethan, two people seemingly perfect for each other, if we knew why Cassi’s friends were happily throwing suspicion around – I just found it quite hard to believe the cops would just rule Cassi’s death a suicide without an investigation, that didn’t make sense suicide note or no suicide note.

I ended up skim-reading the last half of the novel, if not more. The concept was interesting but it wasn’t very well executed at all and the beginning of the novel throws you in the deep end with no rhyme or reason. The characters weren’t charactes I cared for because they lied, they kept secrets, they just didn’t act the way friends should act with each other and there were too many recriminations. I was super disappointed – I wanted to love the book (I want to love ALL the books I read) and I just didn’t, which was a shame. I’m glad I read it because it did sound fascinating, it just didn’t live up to my expectations (or its own, let’s be honest), a thriller should thrill you and keep you on the edge of your seat and My Last Kiss didn’t do that at all, sadly.