Sometimes a book comes along that everyone raves about, Kiss Me First is such a book. Every time I read a magazine or a newspaper someone is singing its praises. Of course a book doesn’t tend to get glowing reviews across the board without striking a chord with the people who read it, and for that to happen it has to tell us something about the world we live in, or the human condition.
Kiss Me First does both. Told through the eyes of a vulnerable young women with a computer addiction who loses her mother to MS. Leila is out of tune with the world and spends most of her time on the internet, playing online games or on an ‘intellectual’ forum called Red Pill. She does not relate to other people in their early twenties. Leila ends up taking on the online identity of Tess. A 38-year-old women with mental health issues. Beautiful and reckless Tess wants to disappear and Leila agrees to help after forum owner Adrien tells her she will be doing a noble thing.
I do not want to give too much of the book away but Kiss Me First is a very modern book. It is about social media, our online identities, mental illness, the internet, human relationships. All the things in the modern world which are both good and bad. The book also shows just how out of touch we can be with each other while being constantly plugged in. Leila is out of touch and immature. It leaves her open to being manipulated even if she is not worldly enough to see it.
I loved Kiss Me First. It is a brilliant book and it makes you think. I also found the book uplifting in a way, it shows that a life – a real one, not a virtual one – takes work, but is worth fighting for.
