Kiss Crush Collide

by Christina Meredith

Overview

It's never been like this before.

Leah has always followed the road paved for her by family and tradition—Miss Popularity, homecoming queen, valedictorian—until she locks eyes with the dark and mysterious Porter.

Now Leah's life is heading for a detour, and for the first time ever, she's the driver.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062062253
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/26/2012
Pages:	313
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.82(h) x 0.77(d)
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Christina Meredith has always wondered, "How fun is it to drive if you always know exactly where you're going to end up?" She lives in Sausalito, California. This is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

Those feeling confined by family and looking for a little bad-boy breakaway action will get some vicarious thrills here.” — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

“Meredith displays a great ear for teen interior monologues. . . . Readers will delight in Leah’s transformation from wealthy, privileged brat to a young woman ready to take chances and live her own life.” — ALA Booklist

From the Publisher

Meredith displays a great ear for teen interior monologues. . . . Readers will delight in Leah’s transformation from wealthy, privileged brat to a young woman ready to take chances and live her own life.

ALA Booklist

Those feeling confined by family and looking for a little bad-boy breakaway action will get some vicarious thrills here.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Those feeling confined by family and looking for a little bad-boy breakaway action will get some vicarious thrills here.

The Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books

High school junior Leah comes from a quintessentially perfect family: her parents are high school sweethearts, her older sisters are both gorgeous valedictorians, and their family is well-off and well connected. With Leah’s oldest sister, Yorke, recently engaged, and middle sister, Freddie, celebrating her graduation, Leah has had enough of the many expectations that weigh on her. When Leah meets Porter, the handsome bad boy who parks cars at her family’s country club, she sees the perfect opportunity to break away from her family and her tried and true boyfriend, Shane. Writing from Leah’s first-person perspective, debut author Meredith spends an inordinate amount of time on the details of the charmed life Leah chafes against and her romantic yearnings, which are sometimes described in queasy terms (“But what my boyfriend spent more than twelve months achieving inch by inch in my bedroom, Porter had plundered in a few sweaty minutes”). The romance and intrigue will draw readers, but the underdeveloped characters and their flattened emotions drain the story of intensity and sizzle. Ages 13–up. Agent: The Chudney Agency. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Those feeling confined by family and looking for a little bad-boy breakaway action will get some vicarious thrills here.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

The summer before her senior year of high school, a girl who seemingly has it all--money, looks, smarts and social position--falls for a dazzlingly handsome but mildly unsuitable boy. Leah Johnson is not the captain of her own ship. Although she knows how to drive, Leah prefers to let others take the wheel. Without much effort or thought, she drifts along in the wake of her perfect sisters, assuming, like the Johnson she is, that she'll be homecoming queen and then valedictorian. Although the pressure to be just like her sisters causes some minor chafing, and she's indifferent to the charms of her handsome, wealthy, athletic boyfriend, it's a dream life, and it never occurs to Leah not to meet everyone's expectations. Until she falls for Jon Duffy, a boy who doesn't quite fit the expected mold. This overwhelming rush of feeling wakes Leah up, and Duffy becomes the catalyst she needs to look at herself and her life choices in a different light. It's a fine premise, but her struggle is tepid, and Leah is so insipid and so completely disconnected from the wider world that the sympathy she generates is muted. Although the most intriguing thread of the book is familial, this tame G-rated story will appeal largely to girls who enjoy romances. (Fiction. 13 & up)

Kirkus Reviews